Scotus Academicus, Tomus sextus: De Legibus Divinis et Humanis

We have already noted above that the temporary law of God imposed upon and prescribed to men is distinguished as twofold: one indeed called the old, which, delivered by God to Moses through an Angel and enjoined upon the Israelites, is contained in the Old Testament, and flourished among the Jews from the time of Moses until the passion and death of Christ; the latter however called the new, which is written in the New Testament, and, given and instituted by Christ the Lord, will endure until the consummation of the age. Mention of the former is made in John 7. Did not Moses give you the Law, and none of you keeps the law? But of the latter Jeremias 31. I will give my law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart; and of both John 1. the law was given by Moses, but the true law and grace were made by Jesus Christ. —

This Mosaic law, then, is rightly and deservedly called the old law: for the precepts of the Decalogue God inscribed upon the hearts of men from the very beginning of the world, as Tertullian lucidly demonstrates in book Adversus Iudaeos, chapter 2.

Why, he says, should God, the maker of all nations, be believed to have given the law through Moses to one people only, and not be said to have bestowed it upon all nations? For unless he had given it to all, he would in no wise have permitted proselytes from the Gentiles to have access to it also; but, as befitted the goodness of God and his equity, inasmuch as he is the Fashioner of the human race, to all nations he gave that law, which he commanded to be observed at fixed and appointed times; when he willed, and through whom he willed, and as he willed: for at the beginning of the world he gave a law even to Adam himself, that he should not eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the midst of Paradise: which if he had done contrary, he would die the death: which law would have sufficed them had it been kept; for in this law given we recognize hidden all the precepts > which afterwards sprang forth when given through Moses, that is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul: and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, and thou shalt not kill, and thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness: honour thy father, and thy mother: thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. The primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in Paradise as it were the mother of all the precepts of God: for indeed if they had loved the Lord God, they would not have done against his precept; if they had loved their neighbour, that is, themselves, they would not have believed the persuasion of the serpent, and so would not have committed homicide against themselves, by falling from immortality, by doing against the precept of God; they would likewise have abstained from theft, and would not have secretly tasted of the fruit of the tree, nor fled from the sight of the Lord our God where they wished to hide themselves among the trees, nor would they have been drawn forth as partakers of the false assurance of the devil, believing him that they were to become like unto God: and thus neither would they have offended God as their Father, who had fashioned them from the clay of the earth as it were from the womb of a mother; if they had not coveted another's goods, they would not have tasted of the illicit fruit. Therefore under this general and primordial law of God, which God had decreed to be observed in the fruit of the tree, we recognize that all the precepts of the later law were specially implanted, which were set forth in their own times: for it belongs to the same author afterwards to teach what has been read, who before had laid down the precept, since it belongs also to the same to instruct the people, whom he had before begun to fashion according to justice. For what wonder is it if he augments discipline who established it? if he takes possession who purchased? Finally, before the Law of Moses written on tables of stone, I maintain there was a law unwritten, which was understood naturally, and kept by the Fathers: for whence was Noe found just, if the righteousness of his natu- ral law did not go before? Whence was Abraham accounted the friend of God, if not from the equity and justice of the natural law? Whence was Melchi- sedech named Priest of God, if not that before the lawful priesthood of the Levitical law there were those who offered sacrifices to God? For thus after the aforementioned Patriarchs the law was given to Moses.... Whence we understand the law of God even before Moses, and not only in Oreb, and in Sina, or in Horeb, but more ancient first in Paradise, then after the Patriarchs, and thus reformed for the Jews at certain times, so that we no longer look to the law of Moses as to the principal law, but to the subsequent one, which at a certain time God exhibited also to the Gentiles, and promised through the Pro- phets he reformed for the better, and foretold as to come: so that as at a certain time the law was given through Moses, so let it be believed that it was observed temporally, and kept: nor let us take away this power of God, which for the condition of the times reforms the precepts of the law for the salvation of man.

Thus far Tertullian. From which it is evident that the Law of Moses, delivered by God through Angels, is deservedly called Old; seeing that it prevailed among men from the very beginning of their formation; namely through that law of nature itself, of which the Mosaic law, especially as regards the precepts of the Decalogue, is expository.

Although many points concerning this law present themselves for discussion, nevertheless we take upon ourselves to expound here the chief general questions customarily formed about it; inquiring: First, what causes the Mosaic law had: Second, who its author was, and of what kind it was: Third, how many and what sort of precepts it comprised: Fourth, what force it had: Fifth, how long it prevailed, and at what time it ceased to prevail.

The present Question treats chiefly of the threefold cause of the Mosaic Law, namely of its Efficient, Ministerial, and Declarative or Promulgating cause. That is to say, whether the old law had God as its institutor, the Angels as its ministers and signifiers, and Moses as its promulgator.

Note 1. That although before the Mosaic law several other laws had been prescribed to men by God, and especially to Adam, the propagator of the human race, so that he might hand them down to his posterity — namely concerning the worship of the divine Majesty through sacred rites and sacrifices, concerning the observance of the Sabbath day, and concerning the keeping of natural equity toward one's neighbor, so that no one do to another what he would not have done to himself, etc. — and also to Noë, the restorer of mankind after the flood, to whom and whose sons God prescribed those precepts which are called those of the Noachides, of which mention was made above; nevertheless it is certain that before the Mosaic law no law divinely consigned to men in writing existed, but all whatsoever then endured were handed down either by the dictate of natural reason or by tradition received from our forefathers.

Hence the Mosaic law is rightly judged to be the first of all laws constituted and posited for men by God in writing; wherefore it is called the first of all posited laws; for a positive divine law signifies a certain whole body of right posited by God himself for men, in which men are gathered together into one mystical body under special signs or sacraments in order to divine worship. But in this way men before Moses were not so instructed into an assembly, nor did they have special common laws prescribed concerning Sacrifices or Sacraments to be frequented. The same must be said of other rites or customs to be instituted; wherefore that whole first period is called the time of the natural law, because during that whole period the natural law alone prevailed, inscribed upon the hearts of men, with divine grace assisting it and promoting nature itself toward the supernatural order. Whence, although it be true to say with Tertullian praised above, that very many precepts were implanted by God in divers men before the law of Moses was prescribed, yet no law was posited for them whereby he might unite those men themselves unto divine worship and unto entering into perfect concord with one another.

Note 2. Before the Mosaic law was drawn up, precepts of a threefold kind had been implanted in men by God, whereby he might restore and reform deviating nature, as Alensis lucidly teaches and explains q. 2, memb. 1, art. 3, saying: that there is a threefold inordination of nature, because there is an inordination of the concupiscible itself, of the irascible itself, of the rational itself; for before the flood the inordination of the concupiscible chiefly prevailed, and in order to restrain and order this, a certain law was added in which man lived before the flood, Gen. 3: Under thee shall be thy appetite, namely under reason. But this law being broken, after the flood there was a great inordination of the irascible, namely when the sons of Noë wished to build a tower up to the Heavens; wherefore a law was given to order the irascible toward one's neighbor: which was, Flesh with blood you shall not eat; and the reason was unto horror of blood and detestation of homicide, that man might shrink from shedding human blood. Afterward > there followed in the time of Abraham an inordination of the rational: because all

were idolaters: against this inordination there was given to Abraham the law of Circumcision, in sign of the recall of that people unto God to be wor- shipped, and in sign of a covenant between the faithful people and God. Of Genesis 17: And it shall be a sign between me and you. The first inordination was of man toward himself: the second of man toward his neighbor: the third, of man toward God: because on account of idols he abandoned divine worship: therefore thus some law was added to man before the flood, and afterward in the time of Abraham.

Such are the words of Alensis, by which under the name of law he understands not a law consisting of many precepts, but special precepts prescribed to men.

Note 3. That not without a positive law must the matter have been deferred until the times of Moses, as Alensis explains in the same place:

since indeed it itself is the right of men living under one right: previously it was necessary, that there should be a united people, before a law should be given: but from the time of Cir- cumcision began the unity and distinction of a people: whence Hugh says, that from then began the unity of the people of God, and the unity of the conversation of the faithful, which was first figured through the Sacrament of Circumcision: afterward it is signi- fied through the Sacrament of Baptism: and therefore previously a law ought not to have been given: nay rather, the law of Circumcision was a sign of future grace, and therefore it ought to precede. Moreover, previously it was needful that there should be a foundation of the law, before a law should be given. Now those foundations were four, name- ly faith in one God, and faith in the incarnation, probation of faith, and firm- ness of faith. For before it was given, there needed to be an attestation of faith in one God, and this preceded in the sign of Circumcision, which was posited in sign of a covenant between God and the people. But the attestation of faith in the Incarnation was made, when the promise was made to Abraham concerning Christ, In thy seed, etc.: but because testimony in the mouth of one does not suffice, nay rather in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word stands: therefore more often was this promise made, even to Isaac and Jacob, that being repeated to each, In thy seed, etc., before a law should be given. But neither ought it to have been given imme- diately, nay rather previously it was needful that there should be a faith proved: now it was proved in Egypt through adversities: namely that no adversity could turn them away from the faith, to whom the law leading into God trine incarnate was to be given: it was needful also that it should be confirmed, lest the people could be seduced by some fallacy: now it was confirmed in many signs and won- ders, which the Lord wrought and showed in the going out of Egypt, and through the desert. But these things having been done and fulfilled, it ought to be given to Moses, whereby it leads into Christ: but this was completed in the fourth age.

Saint Thomas brings forward another cause of this delay and postponement in promulgating the old law until the times of Moses, namely that that law was prescribed to two kinds of men. First, to the hard and proud, who are checked and held back by the law: Second, to the good, who instructed by the law are helped and directed in fulfilling what they intend. And each respectably the old law was fittingly given. That it was given on account of men of the former kind is evident, because men boasted over two things, namely over knowledge and over power: over knowledge indeed, as if natural reason sufficed them for attaining salvation; which error, that proud man might lay aside, it was needful that the ingenuity of reason, permitted for a long time throughout long time without the aid of a written law, be allowed to experience its own defect from this, that down to idolatry and most certain vices it lapsed about the times of Abraham, it being now posited that it was needful that a law be given as a remedy for human ignorance; because indeed the law made known sin previously acknowledged. But when man through the law was convicted of his former ignorance, he was convicted also of his infirmity, while he adverted that he was unable to fulfill what he had known to be right. Likewise it is proved concerning the upright and just, to whom the aid of grace was necessary when through the exuberance of sins the natural law was already beginning to be obscured and darkened: for it was needful that aid of this kind be ministered in a certain order, that they might be led by the hand through imperfect things unto perfection; wherefore between the law of nature and the law of grace the old law ought to be interposed.

These things noted by way of prelude, three things here occur to be determined: First, whether the old law is good, and founded by the true God. Secondly, whether it was meritoriously intimated through Angels or through the Son of God, who by Isaiah is called the Angel of great counsel. Thirdly, whether Moses was only its promulgator, or whether he in some part instituted and completed it.

First Conclusion. — The old law truly was founded by the true God, and Father of our Lord Jesus, as by a legislator.

This is of faith against various heretics. First, for the Cerdonianists, on the testimony of Saint August., book De Haeresibus, num. 21, thought that the God of the Law and of the Prophets was neither a good God nor the Father of Christ the Lord, but that God whom they called just. But this error the Manichees, Marcionists, and Valentinians renewed and propagated, who despised the Old Testament, affirming with sacrilegious mouth that the God who gave the law through Moses and spoke to the Hebrews was not the true God, but one of the princes of darkness. Before which errors Simon Magus preceded, affirming that there are two Gods, one good, the other evil, as Clement Romanus relates, book Constit., cap. 19. Against which plagues various Fathers out of the Saints fought, but especially Irenaeus book 1. cap. 10. and 21. Epiphanius Heresy 21. and 66. Tertullian in the book Adversus Valentinianos, and in four books Contra Marcionem. Augustine in the books Contra Faustum, and Contra Adamantum Manichaeum, and Contra adversarium Legis et Prophetarum, but especially in the books De Spiritu et littera.

Proof 1. The conclusion is proven by the authorities of Sacred Scripture, in which Christ approves the old law and fulfills it: for He Himself professes, I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it; wherefore, that He might keep the precepts of the law, He was circumcised, was carried by His parents to the temple and offered, so that things might be done according to the custom of the law concerning Him. Likewise He went up to the temple on feast days, that He might adore together with the rest; He ate the Paschal Lamb with His disciples, according to the precepts of the law. Moreover, in Matt. 15 Christ the Lord calls the old law the commandment of God, saying to the Jews: You have made void the commandment of God because of your traditions. In Luke 1 Zachary testifies that it is the same God of Israel who has wrought the redemption of His people, and who has spoken through the mouth of His holy prophets, who are from the beginning of the world; and in the same place the most blessed Virgin testifies in

her Canticle, saying: He has taken up Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, etc.

It is confirmed by the testimony of the Apostles; for St. Peter in Acts 3 speaks thus:

God who foretold through the mouth of all the prophets that Christ His Son should suffer, and has fulfilled it.

St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans thus begins: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning His Son, etc. And the Epistle to the Hebrews likewise begins thus: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by His Son. Therefore since the old law is a commandment of God, and since Christ proved and fulfilled it, and urged again and again in His sermons and colloquies that it was to be kept by others; moreover, since the same God who instituted the New Testament, prescribing it to us through His Son, also spoke through the prophets and the fathers and prescribed the law, it is necessary either that heretics likewise reject the New Testament, or confess that the Old Testament also was founded by the true and only God. — To these add that in the New Testament the Mosaic law is approved and praised as good: for St. Paul to the Romans 7 says: The law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good; and 1 Tim. 1: we know that the law is good, if any man use it lawfully; Galatians 3: the law was our pedagogue in Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but after faith is come, we are no longer under a pedagogue. Since therefore the law, as pedagogue, led us to faith in Christ, certainly it could not fail to be good, seeing that it directed and conducted us to so perfect a mark and end. — Wherefore the Council of Toledo deservedly decreed thus in its confession of faith: If anyone shall say or believe that one God is of the ancient law and another of the Gospels, let him be anathema; which decree the Council of Trent renewed at the beginning of session 4, where, treating of the Canonical Scriptures, it established and decreed that the sacred Synod receives and venerates all the books both of the Old Testament and of the New, since one God is the author of both,... with equal affection of piety and reverence.

This assertion of ours can also be confirmed by reason. First, for the foundation of the heretics is false, and demolished by most efficacious arguments and demonstrations in the first Tractate of our Theology, in the Question on the Unity of God, where we proved that it is impossible that there be two or more gods. Then, even if per impossibile there were more than one, it would not follow from this that the old law is to be referred to an evil god; because this god, if he existed, as the heretics feign, would be the most intense enemy of Christ the Lord, and of His Father, namely of the good God; and consequently that law would not have to be attributed to such an evil god which bears witness concerning Christ and leads by hand to Christ: for he would not have sanctioned a law by which his own kingdom would be utterly destroyed; since indeed the Manichaeans and other heretics contended that the old law and the kingdom of the prince of this world, whom they called the just god or the evil god, had been altogether overthrown through Christ the Lord; according to that oracle of the same Christ the Lord: Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. But the old law bears witness concerning Christ, according to that word at the end of Luke: All things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me; and John 5: If you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also: for he wrote of me. And he had premised: Search the Scriptures, for you think in them to have life everlasting: and they are they which give testimony of me; and you will not come to me that you may have life. Finally, it belongs to the same one to propose the end and to dispose the means for attaining it: but the evangelical law is the end of the Mosaic law, which as a pedagogue led us to Christ as to the end; according to that word to Rom. 10: Christ is the end of the law unto justice to every one that believeth. Therefore the same God who is the author of the evangelical law is also the author of the Mosaic law.

You will object 1. That text of Ezekiel, chapter 20, where God speaking of the old law says, I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments in which they shall not live: therefore truly the old law was not good, and consequently neither from a good god nor from the true God, who cannot be the author of any evil.

I answer. The Holy Fathers give various answers to the passage cited above. First, for St. Jerome says on that passage, that the discourse here is not about the old law, but about the iniquitous laws of tyrants and the impious rites of the gentiles, by which the Jews, dispersed through the regions because of their iniquities, are weighed down and punished by the just judgment of God. Whence indeed it is confirmed; for in the same chapter the Lord had said before, in verse 11: I gave them my statutes, and showed them my judgments, which if a man do he shall live in them. Therefore in the prior text God speaks of another kind of precepts than the divine ones: but these can be nothing other than the precepts of the Gentiles by which the Jews were burdened.

But on the hypothesis that the aforesaid text must be understood of the old law, I answer with St. Gregory, book 28 of the Moralia, c. 21, that the precepts of the old law are said to be not good comparatively, not absolutely: because doubtless, compared with the precepts of the new law, which are better, they do not possess that goodness: for what is good absolutely holds, comparatively and in respect of a better good, the character of not-good. It is said, moreover, that men do not live in them: because they are not sufficient for directing men to eternal life, nor do they bestow sanctity upon the soul. These rags of infancy, He says, which He Himself gave through the prophet to infants, the Lord reproved, saying:

I gave them statutes that were not good, that is, evil, as if they were evil in respect of worse things, and good, since they are not good comparatively to better ones: even as God said to the erring Jewess concerning Sodom and Gomorrah: You have justified your sisters in all your abominations which you have wrought. So the good precepts given to the unlearned are recorded as not good beside the subsequent better precepts of the Old Testament.

I answer 2. That the old law is not good is alleged also from Scripture: for by the testimony of the Apostle, Rom. 7: sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence; and c. 4: the law works wrath: for where there is no law, neither is there transgression; c. 5: the law entered in that sin might abound; 1 Cor. 15: the strength of sin is the law; 2 Cor. 3: the letter kills, and it is the ministration of death, and of condemnation. And Scripture concluded all under sin, Galatians 3. For the sake of transgressions the law was laid down: yet nevertheless it is good of itself absolutely: for Rom. 7: the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and good; Gal. 3: the law was our pedagogue in Christ, that we might be justified by faith; 1 Tim. 1: the law is good, if any man use it lawfully, etc.

You will object 2. That saying of the Apostle to the Hebrews 8, where, speaking of the Old and the New Testament, he says: If that first had been without fault, surely no place would have been sought for a second; but the law which is not without fault is not good; for good arises from an integral cause, but evil from any defect whatever; hence the Apostle judges that the old law was not good.

I answer by distinguishing the major: The Old Testament was not without fault, as though it were an induction to fault, I deny; because it was occasioned by the fault committed, and demonstrated a fault previously unknown, I concede. Hence St. Thomas aptly says on this passage that something can belong to a law in two ways: either in itself, and thus it was good; or in respect of those to whom it was given, and thus it is said to have fault on account of two things: First, because it did not give the power to purge sins committed, as the same Apostle indicates later in chapter 10, It is impossible that with the blood of bulls and of goats sins should be taken away. Second, because it did not give assisting grace for avoiding sins, but only for knowing them; and thus it was an occasion of sin, according to that of Romans 7, I had not known concupiscence if the law did not say: Thou shalt not covet; and thus it is said not to be without fault, because it left men in the very fault.

You will insist: From the Apostle to the Romans 7, The law entered in that sin might abound: therefore the law is truly inductive to sin. Likewise from the same Apostle to the Galatians 3, Whosoever are under the works of the law are under the curse; but what is under the curse is evil: therefore truly the works of the old law were evil.

He answers to the first, our Alexander q. 28 art. 2, that something can contribute to the increase of sin in two ways, namely either by occasion or by cause; but the law entered in that sin might abound, not by cause, as though it were inductive to sin, but by occasion; for as the Apostle says there, But taking occasion by the commandment, sin wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.

To the second indeed the same responds, that the curse is twofold: one of punishment, another of fault; in the former way those who were under the law were also under the curse, not because they were under the works of the law, insofar as they were works of the law; but only insofar as they presumed concerning those works, trusting in themselves.

You will object 3. In the old law, as is clear from chapter 21 of Exodus, among the judicial precepts the penalty of retaliation holds place, Soul for soul, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; but this precept of law was disapproved by Christ the Lord in Matthew 5 in these words: You have heard that it was said to them of old: Eye for eye, etc.; But I say to you, not to resist evil. Therefore the old law commanded something to be disapproved; and accordingly it was neither good nor founded by the good and true God.

I answer, that this law of retaliation is not reproved by Christ the Lord as evil; for it was most excellent for that time for which it was enacted; but by these words, But I say to you, etc., Christ instituted one better and more perfect, as St. Augustine expressly explains in book De Sermone Domini in monte:

The justice of the Pharisees, he says, is lesser, not to exceed the measure of vengeance, lest anyone repay more than he received, and this is a great step: For no one is easily found who wishes to render a blow for a blow received, and hearing one word of abuse, to be content to return one, and one worth just as much; but more often, disturbed by anger, he avenges immoderately: either because he thinks him unjust who wounded him first, he wounds with greater pleasure him who had not wounded him. Such a mind the law in part restrained wherein it is written: eye for eye, tooth for tooth; by whose names a measure is signified, that injury should not pass beyond vengeance, and this > is the beginning of peace. Perfect peace indeed is wholly to refuse such vengeance: therefore whoever renders only as much as he received, already forgives something: for the guilty does not merit so much punishment as he who was wounded by him while innocent suffered.

And book 19 Contra Faustum chapter 25, It is not the fuel but the boundary of anger: not that what lay dormant might thereby be kindled, but lest what burned might extend further.

You will say 1. The sacrifices of the old Law were unpleasing and hateful to God: therefore the law which instituted such sacrifices was not good. The antecedent is proved from Psalm 50, If thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted. Isaiah 1, To what purpose do you offer me the multitude of your victims? I am full: incense is an abomination to me. Your new moons, and your solemnities my soul hateth, I have laboured in bearing them. But the Apostle in Hebrews 10, explaining that verse of Psalm 39, Sacrifice and oblation thou didst not will, says: Oblations, and sacrifices, and holocausts for sin thou didst not will, neither are they pleasing to thee, which are offered according to the law: therefore the law commanding those sacrifices was not acceptable to God, nor consequently instituted by him; since he hated nothing of the things he made.

I answer 1. That in the cited words of the Prophets it is foretold that those sacrifices would cease in the time of the Evangelical law; but from this it is not consequent that they were evil while the Mosaic law stood. Second, the Prophets do not disapprove in those words the sacrifices themselves, but the perverse mind of the offerers, who although they were in most grievous sins nevertheless thought by sacrifices offered with the will of mortal sin to appease God: whence Isaiah 1, When you shall multiply your prayers, I will not hear them, for your hands are full of blood. Third, the Prophets signify by this manner of speaking that these sacrifices were imperfect, which they freely confess: just as we shall say below that the old law also, although good, was nevertheless imperfect.

You will object 5. The works of the word of God are perfect, as is said in Deuteronomy 32: but the Mosaic law was not perfect: wherefore the Apostle says in Hebrews 7, that there is a disannulling of the preceding commandment on account of its weakness and unprofitableness: therefore God is not the author of that law. Moreover, Ecclesiasticus chapter 3 says, I have learned that all the works which God has made continue for ever: but the Mosaic law ought not to remain for ever; since with the advent of the new law it was to be set aside. Finally, those things which are from God are good, and suffice for salvation: but the old law was insufficient for salvation: therefore it must not be judged to have been established by the true God.

I answer to the first, something can be called perfect either simply and absolutely, or relatively and comparatively with respect to those to whom it befits. I grant, however, that the old law was not perfect simply and absolutely, but only respectively and comparatively with respect to those to whom it was to be given, and for the time during which it was to be given: for the Jews were still untrained and as it were children, for whom a Pedagogue was necessary, by whom they might be instructed through fear of punishments: but the time had not yet come in which the law of grace would be given, which is perfect absolutely and simply: for it was due to be given only in the fullness of time. And just as precepts given to children are perfect when account is taken of them, although they are not absolutely and simply perfect: so also the old law was perfect when account was taken of the Jews who were to be instructed by it: it was likewise perfect with respect to the time, for the time did not demand anything more perfect, since it had to precede the law that is simply perfect. To the second I say: those works of God are eternal which God made perfect simply and absolutely, this I concede: those which he made perfect only comparatively and for a certain time, this I deny: for since they were referred to something else, and were made by God in order toward something else, when that to which they were referred arrives, they must cease. Hence the Apostle says in Galatians 3: Where faith is come, we are no longer under a pedagogue.

To the third I say that those things which are good and from God, together with the help of grace, truly suffice for salvation, this I concede: unless they have the help of grace annexed to them, this I deny. Now God furnished this help also to the Jews, just as he furnishes to all the nations a help sufficient for salvation; though he bestowed it with more abundant honor and richer mercy upon the faithful of Christ living under the Evangelical law.

You will object 6. That law is not from God which does not accord with the eternal law of God: but the old law does not accord with the eternal law of God; for the eternal law, says St. Augustine in the books De libero arbitrio, commands one to relinquish love of temporal things and to turn oneself cleansed toward eternal things; but the old law turns the soul toward temporal things; since it promises temporal goods alone as a reward to its observers, as is evident from many texts of Exodus, and also of Deuteronomy, especially chapter 28, where Moses, addressing the people of Israel, says:

if thou keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways,... the Lord will make thee abound in all goods, in the fruit of thy womb, and in the fruit of thy cattle, in the fruit of thy land, which the Lord swore to thy fathers to give thee. The Lord will open his excellent treasure, heaven, that he may give rain to thy land in its season: and will bless all the works of thy hands.

Alexander of Hales answers that there is a twofold conversion toward temporal things: one indeed on account of temporal things alone, so that therein one's state may rest, after which manner the Mosaic law did not convert men toward temporal things: the other conversion is made toward temporal things, not on account of these themselves, but on account of eternal goods; and in this way the law of Moses converts toward temporal goods, that man may thereby be raised up to eternal things, namely that man may be moved by the gift to the love of the giver himself, namely God. Whence in Deuteronomy 11, Moses, speaking to the Israelites in the place of God, says:

If then you obey my commandments, which I command you this day, that you love the Lord your God, and serve him with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, he will give to your land rain early and late, that you may gather in your corn, and your wine, and your oil, and hay out of the fields to feed your cattle, and that you yourselves may eat and be filled.

Second Conclusion. — The old law was delivered by God to Moses through the ministry of Angels.

Proof 1. from Scripture, Acts 7, where it thus speaks of Moses: This is he that was in the church in the wilderness with the Angel, who spoke to him in mount Sina, and with our fathers, who received the words of life to give to us. And the Apostle says in Galat. 3: Why then the law? It was set because of transgressions, and ordained by Angels in the hand of a mediator, namely Moses, who says of himself in Deuter. 5: I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to show you his words. And in Heb. 2: For if the word spoken by Angels, etc., where by that word he understands the Mosaic law, as is evident from the words following: for he compares it with the Evangelical law, and signifies that this is the difference between the old law and the new, that the old law, as a law of servitude, was delivered to the Jews through Angels: but the new law, because it is the law of grace, was prescribed to us through the Son of God.

This very thing the holy Fathers teach commonly: namely first of all St. Dionysius in book De Coelesti Hierarchia, chapter 1, where, having said that the celestial intelligences are chiefly called by the name of Angels, for this reason that first in them is the divine illumination, and next illuminations are conveyed through them to us which surpass our natural knowledge, he straightway adds: for so the law, as divine scripture testifies, was given to us through Angels. Then, unfolding how the Angels led all the Patriarchs and Prophets to the knowledge of divinity, he concludes: Have they not also handed down, according to divine scripture, that that same legislative law was given to Moses by the just God indeed: that they may teach the people going before the divine and sacred representations of them? But the same Theologian condemns that heresy, since the works of the Angels toward us have been permitted, as though he alone perceived those things of the divine law which pertain to the state contained therein, and to the heavenly state which first raises one up to Divinity.

Reason itself persuades this same thing. For it was most fitting that, since the perfect law was to be given through God himself incarnate, the imperfect law, which disposed one toward the perfect law, should be delivered to men not through God himself, but through the ministry of Angels.

You will say: He who spoke to Moses, prescribing to him the old law, called himself God and Lord. Exodus 20, saying: I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt: therefore he was not an Angel, but the divine Word: which, since it is God, is called the Angel of great counsel in Isaias.

I answer that the Angelic legislator claimed such a name for himself, not because he wished to be seen as God, but because he spoke in the name of God, and bore and represented him: whence St. Gregory the Great in the preface of book Iob cap. 2 says of the Angel who is written to have appeared to Moses, that he is at one moment called Angel and at another Lord: Angel on account of the ministry by which he served the others by speaking: but he is called Lord, because presiding over interior things he ministered the effect of speaking. When he speaks with him obedience is rendered, and by dispensation he is called Angel, and by inspiration Lord. — And St. Augustine had said before this, lib. 3. De Trinitate, cap. 1, writing: When the precepts of the heavenly judge are endured, it is not angels who give thanks; but the judge himself commands: while prophetic holiness speaks of him, even if we say: the prophet says, he willed nothing else than that the Lord be understood to have spoken; and if we say: the Lord said, we do not withdraw the prophet, but remind of what he said through him.

Third conclusion. — Moses was only the promulgator of the old law: but by no means its institutor.

Proof: First indeed from chapter 20 of Exodus, where God alone is asserted to have founded and ordered all the precepts of the old law which follow afterwards, in these words: And the Lord spoke these words: I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: thou shalt not have strange gods before me, thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, etc. Afterwards indeed all the precepts of that law are handed down under the same tenor of words, whether moral, and pertaining to the Decalogue, or ceremonial, or judicial: and consequently it follows that all the precepts of that law were founded by God commanding and ordaining, and promulgated through Moses.

Proof 2. If any precepts of the old law had been founded by Moses, especially either the ceremonial or the judicial ones, as someone holds: yet these also have God himself as author, as is clear from holy Scripture, which whenever it treats of such precepts, often repeats and inculcates these words: The Lord spoke to Moses. Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: or adds this: Moses spoke to the children of Israel, all things which the Lord had commanded. But concerning the judicial precepts, Exodus 21, where they begin to be handed down, God addresses Moses thus: These are the judgments which thou shalt set before them: if thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve thee. Likewise chapter 25, in which the ceremonial precepts are treated of, we read: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the children of Israel, that they take me first-fruits, etc. From which ways of speaking it stands thence that nothing at all was derived from Moses and promulgated except in the name of God the legislator. Finally, the old law is simply called the law of the Lord: which is an indication that it was founded by the Lord. Whence deliberately John 1: The law was given by Moses; grace and truth were made by Jesus Christ. For as Clement of Alexandria observes in book 1 of the Paedagogus: The law was given by Moses, not by Moses, but by the Word, and indeed concerning the law, it was merely given, he says, Scripture by Moses; but truth and grace are not said merely to be given by Christ, but, what

You will say 1: The old law is for the most part called the law of Moses, especially Malachia 3 and Luke 2. Whence by Clement the Roman Pontiff, and by certain others, Moses is called not only the promulgator of that law, but also its legislator: therefore some of its precepts were instituted by Moses by his own authority.

I deny the consequence: for in the same places in which the old law is called the law of Moses, it is also called the law of the Lord, that it may be signified to have been handed down by the Lord; for in the same chapter 3 of Malachia God speaks thus: Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb, for all Israel, precepts and judgments: but Luke 2 it is said thus: After the days of her purification were fulfilled, Mary, according to the law of Moses, carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord. By which it is signified that the same law was called both of the Lord and of Moses: of the Lord indeed as of the author, of Moses as of the promulgator.

You will say 2: The precept concerning the bill of divorce was given not by God, but by Moses, according to that saying of Christ the Lord, Matth. 19, where when he had said that it is not lawful for a man to put away his wife, because what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder, the Disciples inquiring: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? he said to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so: therefore Moses instituted some precepts of the old law.

I deny the antecedent: for if Moses himself had instituted the bill of divorce, it would follow that he himself had by his own authority granted the faculty of dissolving legitimate marriage: but no man can by his own authority grant such a faculty, since what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder, saith Christ; and consequently the precept concerning the bill of divorce was granted not by Moses, but by God. Nor is any force to be drawn from those words: Moses commanded, and permitted: for if from thence it were licit to infer that Moses was the author of this commandment, it would also be licit to infer that he was the author of the Decalogue: for Mark 7, Christ reproaching the Jews, because on account of their traditions to be kept they made void the precept of God, says: For Moses said: Honour thy Father and thy Mother. Nor likewise is any force to be drawn from these words, but from the beginning it was not so: for although from the beginning God did not give this faculty to men, that whenever they wished with impunity to put away their wives, they might give a bill to those whom they would put away; nevertheless from that it does not follow that God could not afterwards concede this faculty on account of the hardness of heart: for, as Alexander says, member 1, article 2, ad quintum,

the law was given to the hard for a scourge: that he might punish them by making them understand punishments, and by withdrawing delights, and in respect of this the law gave the bill of divorce, which is in the law by permission, that he might withdraw the hard, namely, and perverse from evil, because they were prone to kill their wives: therefore that he might scourge them in this, he ordained that it should not be licit for them again to take wives after they had given a bill of divorce.

There were various heretics who asserted that the old law was opposed to salvation as being evil, and instituted from a perverse principle; this the holy Epiphanius and Augustine in his book De Haeresibus affirm especially of the Cerdonians, Marcionites, and Manichaeans: and they strove to persuade this from the fact that the old law is said in the New Testament for the most part to be imperfect and weak. But it must be known that something can be called perfect in two ways, namely either absolutely and positively; or negatively and comparatively. In the former way that is called perfect which of itself is not ordered to another thing as its complement, but consists in all its own excellencies, and is integrated by its perfections. In the latter way, however, something is called perfect when it has of itself all things that befit it according to its state, nevertheless while it is compared with another thing it is called imperfect or less perfect; wherefore it is ordered to that other as to what is more excellent, and when the more excellent arrives and shines upon it, it ceases to be perfect: thus the light of dawn, although perfect in itself, yet comparatively can be denied to be perfect with respect to the sun of day, because it is lesser than the light of the sun, and ceases when that shines upon it.

Note 2. The law of Moses can be considered with respect to three laws, which the Apostle distinguishes: namely the law of nature, the law of concupiscence or of the fomes, and the law of the Gospel or of grace; according to which respects the Mosaic law can be considered to involve a triple necessity and dispensation: since it seems to have been given in aid of the law of nature from the mercy of God, for the correction and emendation of the law of sin or of the fomes from the ordination of divine justice: for the designation of the law of grace, and its preparation and leading into it, from the precept and counsel of divine wisdom.

Note 3. Something may be said to conduce to salvation in two ways: namely insofar as it is inductive to good, and recallative from evil — when it would remove man, whether per se or occasionally, from performing those things which would stand in the way of attaining salvation. Now it is certain that the old law was ordered to the salvation of men in both of these ways; since it was inductive to the good which it commands, and recallative from the evil which it prohibits; wherefore the Apostle says to the Romans: The law is holy and just, and the commandment holy, and just and good. The gloss weighs these words thus: the law is unto life, and it bids goods, and forbids evils, and makes sin known, whence it is called Holy, that is, soundly teaching: the commandment just, that is, justifying the sinner: and good, that is, acquiring useful life.

The old law was given to the Jews on account of Christians, as St. Augustine expressly expounds in book 4 Contra Faustum, who, answering the objection of Faustus contending that that law was prescribed to the Jews alone and must be cast aside by Christians, says:

That promises of temporal things are contained in the Old Testament, and are therefore called the old Testament, none of us doubts; and that eternal life, the kingdoms of heaven, belong to the new Testament. But that in those temporal things there were figures of things to come which were fulfilled in us, upon whom the ends of the world are come, my suspicion was not, but apostolic understanding, Paul saying, when he spoke of such things: all these things happened to them as figures of ours. And again: all these things happened to them in figure; but they are written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Therefore we do not receive the old Testament for attaining those promises, but for understanding in them the announcements of the new Testament: for the witness of the old conciliates faith to the new.

There remains therefore only here to determine: First, whether truly the old law is to be called imperfect positively and absolutely, or negatively and respectively: Second, for what ends it was instituted.

First Conclusion. — The old law was imperfect, not absolutely, but respectively. This Conclusion embraces two parts, the first of which was sufficiently proved in the prior Conclusion of the preceding Question.

But the latter part is proved, namely that the Mosaic law was imperfect, not positively, but comparatively with respect to the Evangelical law. It is proved, I say: that law must be called imperfect comparatively which did not confer justifying grace, in which perfection and efficacy for attaining eternal salvation consist: but such was the old law, and henceforth it was negatively and comparatively imperfect. The major stands. But the minor is proved. First from holy Scripture, for in John it is said: The law was given by Moses; grace and truth were made by Jesus. Whence the Apostle says to the Romans 8.: What was impossible to the law, in that it was weakened through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and of sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Wherefore to the Hebrews 7. he affirms: That there is a disannulling of the preceding commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law brought nothing to perfection. Hence he often says that righteousness is not from the law, but through Christ; thus to the Galatians 2.: If righteousness be by the law, then Christ died in vain.

Proof 2. This same minor from the holy Fathers: First indeed from St. Augustine book 1. to Boniface, who speaks thus of Christ: It is written, Proverbs 3., according to the Seventy Interpreters: he carries law and mercy in his tongue: Law wherewith he may terrify,

mercy wherewith he may succour: Law through a servant, mercy through himself: Law as in a staff, which Eliseus sent to the son of the widow to raise him, and he rose again. For if a law had been given which could justify, doubtless righteousness would indeed be by the law. Mercy truly as in Eliseus himself, who bearing the figure of Christ, by raising the dead was joined to a great Sacrament, as it were by the signification of the Old Testament.

He has similar things in Sermon 2. De Verbis Apostoli, chapters 8. and 9., and also in many other places.

Saint Fulgentius subscribes to this in book 2 of De Veritate praedestinationis, c. 19. The law without grace can show sickness but cannot heal it: it displays wounds but does not supply remedies; but that the precept of the law may be fulfilled, grace ministers help, and thus the law reveals guilt, grace bestows pardon. It belongs therefore to the law that we know sins; to grace, that we avoid them. He adds in book 1, c. 7: The distance, then, between the letter commanding and the spirit quickening, that is, between the law and grace, is this: because the law shakes, grace converts the will of man. That one cries out, this one gives: the good we will, that one cries aloud, this bestows. By the law there strikes upon man's pleasure the terror of divine justice; by grace mercy infuses charity: by the law the will received the spirit of bondage unto fear; by grace it receives the spirit of adoption of sons, wherein we cry: Abba, Father.

Saint Augustine, in his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, distinguishes a fourfold state of men: namely, before the Mosaic law, under the law itself, under the grace of Christ, and in the peace of eternal beatitude. Before the law, he says, we follow the concupiscence of the flesh; under the law we are drawn by it; under grace we neither follow it nor are drawn by it; in peace there is no concupiscence of the flesh. Before the law, therefore, we do not fight, because we not only desire and sin, but also approve of sins; under the law we fight, but are overcome; for we confess that the things we do are evil, but because grace is not yet present, we are overcome.

Saint Prosper assents with sententia 32, saying: He who gave the law, himself also gave grace: but he sent the law through a servant, whereas with grace he himself descended: so that, since the law shows sins but does not take them away, those who wish to fulfill the law by their own strength and cannot are compelled toward grace, whereby it takes away both the disease of impossibility and the guilt of disobedience.

You will say: The Patriarchs and Prophets, and very many others, were just and most perfect in the state of the old law: therefore perfect justice existed in the old law. And on this account the old law must not be called imperfect.

I answer: First indeed, that very few were just and most perfect under the old law, as Saint Augustine teaches in the book De catechizandis rudibus c. 22, and in the book against Adimantus, c. 17.

I say 2, that if any men were just in the Old Testament, they belonged not to that old Testament, but to the law of Grace and of the Gospel, as Saint Augustine teaches in the book De Spiritu et littera, cc. 25 and 26, and in book 3 to Boniface, c. 4, saying:

Then the men of God, according to the distribution of times, are shown to be dispensers and bearers of the other Testament indeed, but heirs of the new. But shall we deny that he belongs to the New Testament who says: Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels? Or him who says: He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps, and put into my mouth a new canticle, a hymn to our God? Or him before the old Testament, which is from mount Sinai,

the father of the faithful, of whom the Apostle says: Brethren, I speak according to man, yet no man makes void the testament of a man, etc.? This sufficiently shows that he belongs to our faith, which is assuredly of the new Testament, which God gave to Abraham by promise. Hence Saint Augustine concludes: Therefore whether Abraham, or the just before him, or after him even to Moses himself, through whom was given the Testament from mount Sinai generating unto bondage, or the other Prophets after him and holy men of God even to John the Baptist, they are sons of the promise, and of grace; according to Isaac, the son of the free woman, not of the law, but of the promise, heirs of God, and coheirs of Christ. For far be it from us to deny that Noë the just, and the just men of the former age, and whoever could be just, whether conspicuous or hidden, from him even to Abraham, belong to the Jerusalem above, which is our Mother. Although they are found to be of an earlier time than Sara, who bore the figure and prophecy of that free mother. How much more evidently then after Abraham? for to whomever the promise itself was so declared that he might be called the father of many nations, all who pleased God are to be held sons of the promise; for not a truer generation of Abraham and of the just thereafter is repeated, but a clearer prophecy. But to the old Testament, which is from mount Sinai generating unto bondage, which is Agar, belong those who, when they have received the law that is just, holy, and good, think that the letter can suffice them for life. And therefore, that they may become doers of the law, they seek not the divine mercy, but, ignorant of the justice of God and wishing to establish their own justice, they are not subject to the justice of God. And afterward: this plainly is the great difference: that these men placed under the law do what they do either from desire of attaining earthly happiness, or from fear of losing it, and therefore they do not truly do it, since carnal cupidity, by which sin is increased, is not healed by another cupidity. Thus to the old Testament belongs what generates unto bondage, because carnal fear and cupidity make its followers servants; but Evangelical faith, hope, and charity make them free. But those placed under grace, whom the Spirit vivifies, and who by that faith do the things which work through love, in hope of goods not carnal but spiritual: not earthly but heavenly: not temporal but eternal; believing especially in the Mediator, through whom they doubt not that the spirit of grace is supplied to them, so that they can do these things well and obtain pardon when they sin. These belong to the Testament of the New, sons of the promise and of regeneration, from God the Father, and the free mother; of which family were all the ancient just, and Moses himself, minister of the Old Testament, heir of the New: because by the faith by which we live, one and the same they lived, believing the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ to come, which we believe already done, etc.

Second Conclusion. — Even though the Mosaic law was imperfect, nevertheless it was wisely ordained and prescribed by God for various ends.

First indeed, that it might make known to man his own infirmity, insofar as knowing it he might seek the Savior; for the Apostle says, Rom. 7: I knew not sin except through the law. Saint Augustine elegantly declares this very cause for prescribing the law in many places, but especially in sermon 13 De Verbis Apostoli, c. 2. The law was given, he says, not that the disease might be healed, but that, the disease increasing, the physician might be sought. If therefore the law had been given which could vivify, righteousness would be entirely of the law. If therefore the law was not given which could vivify, why was it given? He follows on and shows why it was given: because even so it was given as an aid, lest you should think yourself sound. Or as he says in Epistle 11: By teaching and commanding what cannot be fulfilled without grace, the law demonstrates to man his infirmity, that the infirmity being demonstrated he may seek the Savior, by whom the will once healed can do what, while infirm, it could not: the law therefore leads to faith, faith obtains the more abundant spirit, and pours forth the charity of the Spirit, charity fulfills the law. Therefore the law is called the Pedagogue, beneath whose most threatening severity, whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Moreover, although man without the old law could know that many things had the character of the dishonest, namely by the natural law and the dictate of reason, yet by the divine positive law it is made manifest to man that those things which natural reason judges dishonest are also sins and offenses against God, who forbids them and most severely punishes sinners. Add that since the natural law has been in us greatly vitiated through original sin, so that many things no longer seem to us to have the character of sin, which nevertheless are truly sins, therefore another law was needed, which should plainly expound the foulness and gravity of sin.

Second, the law was given in order to break and blunt man's pride: namely, insofar as man might come to know that he was utterly unequal, and insufficient by his own powers, to avoid sins. This indeed Saint Augustine declares thus in Epistle 157:

The law therefore had to be given, he says, which would more plainly show man to himself, lest the proud human spirit think that it could be just of itself, and, ignoring the justice of God, that is, that justice which comes to man from God, and wishing to constitute its own, that is, as it were one wrought by its own powers, should not become subject to the justice of God. It was necessary therefore that, upon the addition of the commandment whose voice is, Thou shalt not covet, the crime of transgression should accrue even to the proud sinner, and thus that grace as medicine might be sought not by an infirmity healed through the law, but by one convicted.

Or as he says in Sermon 13 On the Words of the Apostle chapter 4:

The law was laid down for the sake of transgression, whence the neck of many was humbled, of those who attributed to themselves, who arrogated so much to their own will alone, that they thought their free will sufficient for justice; which, when it was whole in its liberty, that is, in Paradise, showed its powers, showed how much they could do, but toward falling, not toward rising.

But in what manner the prescription of the law broke man's pride, the same Saint Augustine teaches in several places, namely that the law, once laid down, became the motive and occasion why concupiscence was stirred up the more, and rose up more sharply against the law that resisted it: for, says the Apostle to the Romans 7, Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. Where by the name of sin he understands concupiscence, which is called sin because it comes from sin, inclines toward sin, and itself becomes sin if consent be given to it. Hence Saint Augustine, book 3 to Boniface chapter 2, expounding these words of the Apostle to the Corinthians 13, The letter killeth: for the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, says: forbidding indeed increases the desire of sin, and thence it kills, unless grace come to the rescue by making satisfaction. And book On the Spirit and the Letter chapter 1, where without the Spirit the Spirit is not at work, inspiring in place of evil concupiscence a good concupiscence, that is, pouring charity into our hearts: truly that law, although good, increases the evil desire by forbidding it: just as the rush of waters, if it does not cease in that direction, becomes more violent when an obstruction is placed, from whose mass when it has burst forth, precipitated with a greater heap, it is hurled more violently down the slopes. For I know not by what means this very thing that is coveted becomes more pleasant while it is forbidden, according to that saying of the Poet: We ever strive toward what is forbidden, and desire what is denied.

Third, the old law was given that it might deter the Jewish people, otherwise rude and imperfect, from evil by fear of punishments: and thus might still show them that they must flee to the aid of divine grace, as the Apostle teaches, writing to the Galatians 3: The law was our pedagogue in Christ: for that pedagogue is he under whose ferule and rods the boy handed over to be instructed. Weighing this passage Saint Thomas says: By the law the Jews, as weak children, were withdrawn from evil through fear of punishment, and were promoted to good by love and the promise of temporal things. This doctrine indeed he had drawn from Saint Augustine, Epistle 114. The law cited above is called a pedagogue, under whose most threatening servitude, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Book On Nature and Grace chapter 1. He who understands that this justice of God was constituted not in the precept of the law, whereby fear is struck, but in the aid of the grace of Christ, unto which alone the fear of the law, as of a pedagogue, usefully leads, himself understands why he is a Christian. Book 3 to Boniface chapter 3. Unto which grace the law leads by terrifying on account of transgression, as a pedagogue, that thus there might be conferred upon man what it itself could not confer. Book On the Perfection of Justice chapter 3. This law commanded that, when man should fail in fulfilling these things, pride swollen should not exalt itself, but that, wearied, he should flee to grace for refuge, and thus the law by terrifying should lead him, by the office of a pedagogue, to loving Christ. And chapter 19 he says: By the fear of the law, made humble as it were by a pedagogue, to lead man to faith and grace. Lest indeed anyone think that we attribute some beginning of salvation to nature, while we maintain that the Old Law was given for this purpose, that it might show man his infirmity, which, once acknowledged, he might seek a physician, that it might break his pride; since by its occasion concupiscence is increased both in number and in gravity: that it may convince him of the gravity of his disease, lest he contemn it as lighter: that finally it may terrify him, and by fear of punishments withdraw him from evil — thus we will that sin be known through the law, that we may feel through grace that the physician is sought. But we say that pride is broken through the law only insofar as the sinner feels himself unequal to the law imposed upon him to be kept, unless he be aided through grace, since so far is it from taking away sin that rather, concupiscence having been increased by occasion, it increases it both in number and in gravity. He sees therefore that it does not suffice him to know the law, because, the law being known, sin is not taken away, nor diminished, but increased: thus he sees himself unequal to keeping the law. But vain for salvation is such a breaking of pride, unless the sinner is humbled before God through grace. — The same teaches Saint Jerome on that passage of the Galatians 3, The law was our pedagogue in Christ. A pedagogue, he says, is assigned to little ones, that the more wanton age may be restrained, and hearts prone to vices be held, while the tender child is trained in studies: and by fear of punishment coerced he is prepared for greater disciplines. Therefore also to the wanton the Old Law was applied in the manner of a stricter pedagogue, that it might guard them, and prepare them for the faith to come.

A threefold other utility of the old law Alexander of Hales sets forth, member 1, article 1, with respect to a threefold law; namely, of nature, of concupiscence, and of the Gospel.

For it is given, he says, in aid of the law of nature; and according to this it runs according to the mode of mercy. It is given also for the correction of the law of sin or of the fomes; and according to this it runs according to the reason of justice. Likewise it is given as a sign, and signification, of the law of grace, and direction toward it; and according to this it runs according to the reason of wisdom. Of the first there is had upon that passage: The law slipped in, the gloss says: The law was given in aid of human nature: that because seeds of justice are in a certain way uncertain in that nature itself, the law might be added, by whose authority and teaching the natural intellect might profit toward producing the fruit of justice: and this is the first utility of the giving of the law. — But the second utility of it is for the correction of the law of sin or of the fomes: and of this there is had: The law was made for transgressors etc., the gloss: The law was laid down that transgression might be restrained, that is, that men at least through fear should cease from transgressing, that at some time they might do it by will. It was given therefore, that it might instruct the people of God under the fear of God, that he might become worthy to receive the promise, which is Christ. — The third utility was for figuring the law of grace or of the Gospel, and direction toward it: whence Psalm 18, The law of the Lord is unspotted, converting souls. Gloss: Converting souls, that is, correcting by its distinction, and sending toward the grace of Christ. And thus it is clear that it is for coercing sins, and for the direction and figuring of the law of grace. According to this it is said Romans 5, The law entered etc. Gloss: There were in that people three kinds of men, namely the hard, beginners, and the perfect: therefore the law was given to all: but to the hard it is given as a scourge, to beginners as a pedagogue; it is given to the just as a sign, namely of the grace to come through Christ. And to the Galatians 3, For transgressors, etc., Gloss. The law was given as a sign of things to come, that things to come might be attested by figures. And according to this there were three things in the law: namely moral precepts, which were for elucidating the law of nature; and ceremonial, which were for figuring the law of grace; because the figures were figures of things to come; and according to this it was to the just as a sign.

So many and so great were the precepts of the Mosaic law, that not undeservedly St. Augustine said that it was itself a burden of innumerable precepts. Wherefore also St. Peter calls the Old Testament, Acts 15, an unsupportable yoke, saying: Why do you tempt God by putting a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Nor indeed without cause; for if faith be given to Genebrard, toward the end of his Chronologia, and to William of Paris, book De legibus, chapter 1, about the middle, the ceremonial precepts were at least six hundred and thirteen; of which 218 were affirmative; namely as many as there are members and bones in a man: and 365 negative, as many days as are usually counted in the year.

Note 2. From the same William of Paris, in the same place, there was a threefold cause why so many precepts were prescribed to the Jews:

The first was the rudeness and lack of learning of the people itself, on account of which they could not be taught and instructed by general precepts alone, and therefore God decreed that they must be taught and instructed by means of particular commandments, as one nourishes a child more with morsels of bread and crumbs than with whole loaves. The second cause, the execrable and manifold idolatry, for the elimination of which the law was largely intended, and this chiefly in all those commandments which seem absurd and bring no utility to those observing them. The third cause, because God willed the book of the law to be sufficient for that time, and for the capacity of that people still novices, or for the most part childish. He willed therefore that the law should contain all those things which would suffice to direct, moderate, and adorn the life of this people, giving them in this abundant matter of meditation, or exercise in that law, according to the grasp of their rudeness and inexperience; lest the paucity of books, and the smallness of the commandments, should together be for them an occasion of wandering off to the books of human traditions, and thence drawing in new credences, and errors of impiety, and superstitions contrary to the law of God: and this was observed among the Hebrews with much vigilance and discrimination for many ages, namely that being content with the wisdom of the law, they should shun the books of other nations. Whence they did not even dare in those times to devote themselves to philosophy, until, mingled among the nations, namely the Chaldeans, they greatly advanced its disciplines and studies, and still do not cease to enlarge and advance them; which study indeed the Egyptians began, and the Greeks pursued most studiously and magnificently. This very thing the law willed, Deuteronomy 4, where it says: For this is your wisdom, and understanding. Similarly Isaiah 8: Should not a people seek unto their God, for the living and the dead, to the law rather, and to the testimony? And Psalm 1: Blessed is the man who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night; and many such passages. Then the law itself so constrained them to its yoke, meditation, and observance, that they had no leisure to think of anything else or to study other things; as is read in Deuteronomy 6: Thou shalt meditate upon them sitting in thy house, and walking on thy journey, sleeping and rising etc. But after they were mingled with the Chaldeans or Babylonians, and with the nation of the Arabs, and mixed themselves with their studies and philosophy, and followed the opinions of the philosophers, not knowing how to defend the credences of their law and the faith of Abraham against their disputations and arguments; hence it is that they became erroneous in the law, and heretical in the faith of Abraham himself; especially after the kingdom of the Saracens was diffused over the place of their habitation, for from then onward many of them followed the eternity of the world and other errors of Aristotle.

Note 3. that the old law embraced three kinds of precepts: moral, ceremonial, and judicial, according to that of Deuteronomy 5, 31: I will speak to thee my commandments and my ceremonies and my judgments.

That law was prescribed to the Jews alone, as is clear from many texts of Scripture. First indeed in Deuteronomy 4 we have these words: What other nation so illustrious, that hath ceremonies and just judgments? Psalm 75: God is known in Judea, in Israel great is his name. Psalm 147: He hath not done in like manner to every nation, and his judgments he hath not made manifest to them. To the Romans 7: What then doth the Jew more? much every way; first indeed because the words of God were committed to them. Therefore the old law was not given to others than those of the Jewish race: doubtless it was placed in ceremonies and judgments, in the sincere knowledge of God, in the divine oracles.

In the worship of God there may be considered the worship itself, the worshippers, and the instruments of worship. The worship itself consists specially in sacrifices which are offered in reverence of God. The instruments of worship pertain to sacred things, such is the tabernacle, and the vessels, and other things of this kind. On the part of the worshippers two things can be considered, namely their institution, which takes place through a certain consecration of the people or of the ministers, and to this pertain the sacraments: and their singular preservation, by which they are distinguished from those who worship not God, and to this pertain observances, such as in foods, and garments, and other things of this sort.

Sacrifices were instituted in the old law both that by this means the Jews, otherwise exceedingly prone to idolatry, might be withdrawn from it by sacrificing to the true God, and not to gods.

Theodoret expounds these things most admirably, tom. 1, sermon 7, where he writes:

The Israelite, having spent a long time in Egypt, imbued with the depraved manners of the natives, having been taught by them to sacrifice to idols and demons, and to delight in games, dances, and musical instruments; God willing to liberate him who was established in the habit of these things, permitted him indeed to sacrifice, yet not to sacrifice all things, nor to the false gods of the Egyptians, but to Himself alone, offering up even the gods of the Egyptians.... God therefore, not needing victims, desiring the savour of smoke, did not institute those sacrifices for that reason: but that he might heal diseased affections. So too he suffered musical instruments in his worship, not because he himself was delighted by their harmony, but that he might gradually abolish the error of idolatry. For if, as soon as they were delivered from the power of the Egyptians, he had set before them perfect laws, they would have recoiled altogether, and despising the bridle would have rushed back to their former defilement. — Chrysostom has similar things, homily 6 on these words of St. Matthew: Behold the star which the Magi saw, where he writes: Do not suppose it unworthy of God that the Magi were called by a star: for in this way thou wilt condemn all the ceremonies of the Jews, and all the rites and sacrifices and purifications, and the new moons, and the ark, and the temple itself. Forasmuch as all these took their origin from the rudeness of the nations. God, for the salvation of the deceived, suffered himself to be worshipped through those things by which those demons had formerly been worshipped; bending them somewhat toward the better, that he might lead back the peoples from their custom, and bring them on to a higher philosophy. Thence it is that God did not prescribe sacrifices to the Israelites until after they had declined into idolatry, melting for themselves a calf to be adored; then above all that through them men might profess that they know God as the supreme lord of life and death, and Creator of all things, but also that they might figure the sacrifice of Christ the Lord, the imperfect figuring the perfect, since he by one oblation fulfilled the difference of the various sacrifices.

Now the sacrifices of the old law were of threefold difference, by reason of the threefold end of sacrificing. First holocausts, which were specially instituted for the protestation of the supreme dominion of God over all things: and therefore the victim of such sacrifices was burned up entirely; that thus it might be shown with how sovereign a right the Lord kills and makes alive, and that as in these the whole animal dissolved into vapour ascended upward, so also it signified that the whole man, and all things that are man's, were subject to the dominion of God, and to be offered to him. Thou hast the precepts in Leviticus 6, and the rites of Leviticus 1.

For thus it is enacted therein: A man who of you shall offer an hosty to the Lord of the cattle, that is, of oxen and sheep, offering victims; if his oblation be a holocaust, and of the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish at the door of the tabernacle of testimony, that he may find favour with the Lord; and he shall put his hand upon the head of the hostia, and it shall be acceptable, profiting unto expiation for him; and he shall immolate the calf before the Lord, and the sons of Aaron the priests shall offer its blood, pouring it round about the altar, which is before the door of the tabernacle. And when the skin of the hostia hath been drawn off, they shall cut the limbs into pieces; and shall put fire under the altar, upon a heap of wood previously arranged: and ordering upon it the members which have been cut up, namely the head, and all things that adhere to the liver, the intestines and feet washed with water; and the priest shall burn them upon the altar for a holocaust, and for a sweet odour to the Lord. In which words three things especially occur to be considered: in order, with respect to the victim offered, to the person offering it, and to the priest immolating. In the victim three things were required, 1. that the animal to be offered be a male; 2. that it be without blemish; 3. that it be select. It ought, I say, 1. to be a male, because the masculine sex is more excellent than the female in all things; but to God, the giver of all good things, better things are to be offered in thanksgiving. Then, since God is most holy and removed utterly from every defect, he can have nothing but what is clean and pure, pleasing and acceptable. Finally, the victim ought to be select; for not all animals indiscriminately could be offered in holocaust, but only these: a bullock, a lamb, a goat, a turtledove, the young of pigeons. — On the part of the offerer it was necessary 1. that he bring the victim into the court, doubtless that he might offer his oblation before the Lord: now the presence of the Lord in the holy place was regarded especially from the first court of the Israelites, whether women or men, toward the interior of the temple; but this rite was so necessary, that women, who otherwise were altogether barred from the court, if they brought a victim, had need to enter into this, as we intimated before. 2. The offerer had to impose his hand upon the head of the victim while it lived. Levit. 1, 4. Upon all victims which were offered by any private person, whether owed, or voluntary, it was necessary for him himself to impose his hand while they lived, excepting only the firstfruits, the tithes, and the Pasch. So John Lightfoot, De ministerio templi. 3. There was need that this imposition of hands take place in the court, doubtless that he might as it were impose his own sins before the Lord, inasmuch as by its death they might be washed away and blotted out; but the place where the offerer stood was ordinarily, as some hold, at the gate of the priests' court, others however beside the altar and within the priests' court, which I judge less probable, since entrance within the priests' court was forbidden to the laity. But in offering the victim and imposing his hand upon it, he said before the priest: To the Lord sin hath been committed, I have done wickedly, I have been rebellious, I have omitted this and that, I repent of them, to thee, and let this be my expiation. — Thirdly, finally, on the part of the priest immolating the victim three things alike were required. 1. He ought to slay the living victim when offered, yet the offerer himself or a levite could fulfil this office when very many victims were to be immolated, so that the priests were not equal to slaying them, as happened especially at the time of the Pasch and on other solemnities, witness those in whom the heads of single families were held bound to stand before the Lord and offer victims. 2. He ought to receive the blood of the slain victim before it was flayed. But he received the blood itself in a clean vessel consecrated to divine worship, and sprinkled from it the altar round about, or at least its four corners. 3. He was bound to flay the victim, divide it into parts, season with salt, wash the intestines and entrails, place those parts upon the heap of wood laid in the altar in that order which those parts kept in the animal while it lived, and finally apply the fire whereby they were wholly consumed. So that nothing residual of that victim remained besides the ashes. Nevertheless the priests reserved the skins of the victims, which they seasoned with salt, that when their ministry was completed, on the following sabbath they might divide those skins among themselves and convert them to their own uses.

Second, the sacrifices for sin, which were instituted by God to stir up detestation of sin and to further its expiation through penance. Of those sacrifices some were for trespass, and others for sin. Trespass and sin in the Scriptures are at times the same thing, but in Leviticus they are distinguished, as St. Augustine observes, quaest. 5. on Leviticus; and the more probable opinion seems to be that which holds that to be a trespass which is committed imprudently, that is, in ignorance; that to be a sin which is committed knowingly.

The Hebrew doctors, as adduced by John Lightfoot in the place cited above, sect. 3, add that the oblation for sin was for a thing committed imprudently against one of the negative precepts, and then only come to be known; but the oblation for trespass was for a thing committed indeed, but in such a way that it was doubted whether a precept had been violated by that action. He who still did not know whether he had transgressed or not was nevertheless bound to offer an oblation for trespass, whereby he would be made safe from the punishment of excision. But if he once learned that he had violated some precept which was sanctioned by the punishment of excision, then he was bound to offer a sacrifice for trespass. So the Talmudists in Herithuth, perel. 2., of which they bring forward various examples, as may be seen in the author of the Thosaphte, where among other things we read: The wife and the sister of a man are together, and he lies with one of them, but he does not know which of them it is. He has two wives, one of them is in her separation, the other is not so; he lies with one or the other, but he does not know which of them it was. To himself is opposed the fat, and something left over from the sacrifice; he eats of one or the other, but he does not know which it was. It is the sabbath and the day of expiation; he labors on one or the other, but he does not know which it was. R. Eliezer judges that he ought to offer a sacrifice for sin; but R. Josua absolves him. Now R. Iose says that although R. Josua absolves him from the oblation for sin, he nevertheless judges that he ought to offer a doubtful oblation for trespass. Hence, in their mind, the oblations are so akin that one can scarcely be discerned from the other.

In the sacrifice for sin one part was burned, but the other went to the use of the priests: to signify that the expiation of sins is from God through the ministry of the priests: except when the sacrifice was offered for the sin of the whole people, or specially for the sin of the priest: for then the whole was burned, because those things which were offered for sin ought not to come to the use of the priests, so that no trace of sin might remain in them, and because this would not be satisfaction for sin: for if it were for the use of those for whose sins it was offered, it would seem to be the same as if it were not offered. You have the precept of these sacrifices in Leviticus 7.; the rites in Leviticus 1. and 6.

The victims to be offered for sin were diverse according to the diversity of those for whom they were offered. For those oblations were made either for the congregation or for private individuals. A he-goat was offered on the day of expiation for the sins of all the Israelites, Lev. 16, v. 15. But a calf for the sins of some particular community, say for one tribe, family, sanhedrin, and even for the whole assembly of the Israelites when they had sinned through ignorance and inexperience, and had afterwards acknowledged their sin, as is prescribed in Levit. 4., v. 18. For private individuals victims ought to be offered, for for the sin of a ruler committed through ignorance a he-goat of the unblemished goats was to be immolated. But for the sins of particular persons and subjects there was offered a she-goat or an unblemished ewe. For the sin of the priest there was offered a bullock, and that publicly, as the author Baal Turim relates in cap. 4. of Levit. Let no one, he says, through shame refuse to confess his sin: for behold, the high priest had sinned, he confessed his sin, and offered an oblation for sin. But when the victim was immolated for a sin and trespass committed through ignorance, the same rites were observed as in the holocausts. Concerning the blood, however, which was carried from those victims into the holy place, the priest behaved thus, as the author Iosaphtha relates in Corban perek 6. The bullocks were burned, and the he-goats which were burned outside the camp; while they were being slaughtered, and their blood was sprinkled on the altar of holocausts, the priest entered and stood between the golden altar and the candlestick. The altar was before him, and he dipped his finger into the blood and sprinkled the blood seven times toward the holy of holies; and as often as he dipped his finger and sprinkled the blood, he also anointed the horns of the altar.

Third, finally, there were the peace offerings which were offered to God, either in thanksgiving, or for the salvation and prosperity of the offerers, in acknowledgment of a benefit received, or of one accepted. And they were divided into three parts: one part was burned in honor of God, the second went to the use of the priests, and the third finally to the use of the offerers, to signify that the salvation of man proceeds from God, the ministers of God directing, and the men themselves who are saved cooperating. You have the precept of this sacrifice in Levit. 7.; the rites, however, in Levit. 3.

The peace offerings, by reason of those for whom they were offered, were universally of a twofold kind; for some were common, others private. Those were called common which were made for the whole nation of the Israelites at the feast of Pentecost, as is established in Levit. 23., where, after the sacrifices of the holocausts and for sin which were to be offered on those days have been recounted, there is added v. 19: and two little goats for a sacrifice of peace-offerings, and these peace oblations by the Talmudists in Zenach perek 5. were called most holy sacrifices, while the remaining oblations were sacrifices less holy.

Private peace oblations were of a threefold kind, for some were offered without bread: others indeed with bread, as is provided in Levit. 7. v. 13, and it was granted that this be done by each of the Israelites. Others, however, were called the peace oblations of the Nazarites, of which there is question in Num. cap. 6. v. 14. and the following. Now there could be offered for peace oblations either oxen, or sheep, or lambs, or goats, as is established in Levit. 3. They were offered especially on account of some benefit obtained from God, or deliverance from dangers, from sickness and prison, or preserved health and prosperity, and on account of a vow made, or in testimony of piety and devotion. — But these peace oblations could not be received nor offered for Gentiles and heathens, as Maimonides teaches, in Corban perek. 3. They received, he says, from the heathens only holocausts, because it is said: from the hand of a stranger you shall not offer the bread of your God. They received holocausts of birds also from the heathens, even though they were idolaters, but they did not receive from them peace oblations, nor flour, nor oblations for sin and trespass. For similarly they did not receive holocausts from the heathens, unless they were offered in the manner of spontaneous or voluntary sacrifices. When a heathen offered a peace oblation, they offered it as a holocaust, because the heathen has a certain affection toward heaven, that is, toward God. If he had vowed peace sacrifices, and gave them to an Israelite, that the Israelite might be expiated by them, the Israelites ate them no otherwise than as if they were the sacrifices of the Israelite; if he gave them to the priests, the priests ate them. From an apostate Jew who had fallen into idolatry and had deliberately profaned the sabbath they received no sacrifices, not even holocausts, which they would have received from a heathen.

According to the threefold state of men. For some are beginners, some proficient, others perfect; the victim for sin, says Alensis, paragr. 3, pertained to the beginners or to the state of penance; the victim of the peace-offerings looked to the proficient, or to the state of justice in the fulfillment of the commandments: the holocaust to the perfect, or to the state of supererogation in the fulfillment of the counsels.

If anyone shall ask by what argument the Israelites could be urged to offer these sacrifices? — I shall answer that they were incited to it by two goads, namely an interior and an exterior one. The interior indeed that of conscience, the exterior the punishment to be inflicted: so that if the former did not suffice for the execution of the thing, the latter would follow. First, I say, they were provoked to it by the goads of conscience, which stirred them both to the observance of the divine commandments, and to the remission of sins, and the attainment of the benefits of God, and thereupon urged them to procure the means thereof (of which kind were these sacrifices), that by an easy task they might become possessed of all of them. — But if anyone was moved neither by conscience nor by religion to discharge these, nevertheless there would run up witnesses greater than every exception, who would assert that he was bound to discharge these sacrifices, and by the sentence of the judges he was compelled to fulfill it under the gravest penalties, especially when the matter concerned the sacrifices and oblations for sin and trespass, and also for fulfilling a vow which had been made in the presence of witnesses.

If you require to know what was to be done by an Israelite who had fallen into some sin, which ought not to be expiated without a sacrifice, while he resided far from Jerusalem, namely whether he ought at once to hasten thither to offer this sacrifice? — I shall answer that in that case he who was bound to discharge an oblation for trespass or sin could defer it to the next feast of those three solemnities at which all the Israelites, or at least the heads of the families, were bound to appear before the Lord in Jerusalem. Yet those who were more fervent emulators of the law, as soon as they acknowledged themselves guilty of some crime, left all things and hastened to Jerusalem, that through the oblation of a victim they might obtain pardon of the guilt they had incurred. — But those who were exempt from this appearance at those three feasts committed their vows to other times. For some among the Jews were exempt from that law of appearance, say servants not yet manumitted, the deaf, the mute, the maimed, the unclean, the decrepit, the sick, the weaker, and those who could not make the journey on foot, and also infants who could not ascend the Mount of the House led by the hand of their parents. — But those who were first invited through messengers sent out by the great sanhedrin, who, running throughout all the regions of the Israelites, announced that on such a day would be celebrated the feasts of Pasch, Pentecost and Tabernacles, and that therefore they must hasten to Jerusalem, that there they might celebrate the feast. — They assembled therefore on the first day of the feast week in the court of the temple, where they were bound to offer victims for sin or trespass, if they had committed any, and then the peace oblations, which on those days were called oblations of joy, because namely they ought to spend those festal days with exultation of soul.

You ask first: Why of the animals which God commanded to be offered to Him, only from the quadrupeds were oxen, sheep, and goats designated; and from the birds only the turtledove and the dove. — Our Alensis answers qu. 50. that a manifold reason can be assigned for this matter.

Because, he says, these are the animals which ascribe all that men live by and are to the necessity of man: that is, to food and clothing. If therefore human necessity be rightly regarded, those alone among animals are necessary to men for food and clothing; the others, however, are superfluous with respect to the necessity of life, as the pig, the dog, and the horse. By the very fact, then, that He did not wish others to be offered to Him in sacrifices, He took away from them the occasion of seeking what was not necessary, since He did not wish to be honored by them. Moreover, because of quadrupeds these are the cleanest, since they live on the cleanest pastures. And even their uncleannesses are clean. Furthermore, among all quadrupeds these are the most gentle, and they undergo death with less resistance: and therefore with less danger to those immolating them. In addition, because they used these animals above all, and in them the beneficence of the Creator toward them was more abundant: it was fitting, therefore, to render thanksgiving and honor to the Creator for His beneficence by means of these very animals. But why He chose from birds the turtledove and the dove, which He also commanded Abraham to offer to Him in sacrifice, Genesis 15, it must be said, he says, that these were chosen especially for sacrifice, because among all birds these are clean, and gentle, and useful for human purposes: and also a chastity almost conjugal is found in doves, and almost widowed in turtledoves: whence it was expressly signified thereby, that if He requires such things in birds offered to Himself, how much more strongly in men offering themselves to Him? But concerning the fact that the sparrow is added in the cleansing of the leper, beyond the reason stated above, a special reason could be assigned: because the sparrow is said to suffer, after its manner, at times a disease very similar. But the general reason why God did not wish other animals to be offered to Him besides these is that all other kinds of animals the idolaters had rendered execrable by their sacrifices, or the Augurs had profaned by the vanity of their observations, or the Magi had made abominable by their poisonous malefices.

Thus far Alexander of Hales. Therefore God chose for Himself from among birds especially doves and turtledoves; both because there was held to be a great abundance of these in the land of promise; and because these animals are symbols of mourning, chastity, love, and simplicity of mind: whence they prefigured the simplicity, charity, and bitter suffering of Christ the Lord. — It must further be observed that God wished young pigeons, but not young turtledoves, to be offered to Him; because among turtledoves the older ones are far better than the young; among doves, however, the young are better: but that which is best ought to be offered to God. Moreover, animals of the male sex alone were to be offered in holocaust, because it is the most excellent among sacrifices, whereas the female is an imperfect animal. Wherefore also blemished and imperfect animals, e.g. lame and blind ones, were removed from sacrifice, because they are ordinarily despised by men. Finally, they were not offered before the eighth day from their birth: because they were as it were abortive, and not yet fully settled on account of their tenderness. But God did not require fish in sacrifices; both because since they dwell in the waters they are more alien to man, and are less subject to his dominion and authority, and accordingly pertain less to him; but man ought to offer to God something proper to himself in testimony of his observance toward God and gratitude: and also because fish die immediately upon being drawn from the water; but that which was offered to the priests to be sacrificed to the living God ought to be alive.

You ask secondly: Why did God wish certain animals to be offered to Him, but drive others away from sacrifices as profane and unclean? — Theodoreto answers, question 1. on Leviticus: that God commanded to be sacrificed to Him those things which are worshipped as gods by the Egyptians: of the number of quadrupeds indeed, the calf and the goat and the sheep; and of birds, the turtledove and the young pigeon. Nor do we ignore that the Egyptians held many other things as gods; but from those which were worshipped as gods He appointed the more gentle ones for sacrifices; but called the rest unclean, so that indeed these, having been execrated as impure, might not be placed in the number of gods; but those, which they themselves sacrificed, that they might not hold them for gods, but adore Him alone to whom it is fitting that these things be offered. Similar things are found in sermon 7. against the Greeks cited above, where, when he had said that God permitted sacrifices to the Israelites because they were accustomed to these rites while dwelling in Egypt, he adds:

He permitted them indeed to sacrifice, yet not to sacrifice all things, nor to offer the false gods of the Egyptians, but to offer the gods of Egypt to Himself alone. For the Egyptians of old held in the number of gods the ox, and the sheep, and the goat, and the dove, and the turtledove, and certain other things which were not edible, but were called unclean. Lest therefore they should be indignant as wholly shut out from those customs, He forbade them indeed to sacrifice to false gods, > but commanded them to immolate to Himself those things which they had long adored, namely of land animals the goat, and the ox, and the sheep, and of birds the turtledove and the dove. For both these animals are gentle and lovers of men. And so the wisest physician applied this kind of remedy to the Egyptian malady, granting indeed to the Jews to sacrifice on account of their weakness, but commanding them to immolate those things which they previously worshipped: that by sacrificing they might learn that those are not gods whom they themselves slaughtered as victims.

Thus Theodoreto. — Therefore God wished certain of the animals which were worshipped by the Egyptians to be sacrificed to Him, but rejected others from sacrifices as impure, in order that He might recall the Israelites from the profane rites of the Egyptians. Origen brings forward another reason in book 1. Contra Celsum, namely that the Egyptians used those animals for auguries.

Evil demons indeed, and Titans or Giants who behaved impiously toward the true Divinity and the heavenly Angels, and were cast out of heaven on that account, busy themselves about the coarser and more impure bodies upon earth: and since they have some perspicacity concerning the future, as beings free from earthly bodies and much experienced in such matters, striving solely for this, that they may lead the human race away from the true God, they insinuate themselves into wild and rapacious animals above all, then also into the more cunning ones; and these, whenever they will, they move whither they will, or even summon the imaginative power of such animals to this or that flight and movement, in order that men, captivated by divinations performed through mute animals, may not seek God who contains all things, nor exercise true piety; but fall by their thoughts into the earth, into birds, into serpents, and even into foxes and wolves. For it has been observed by those skilled in these matters that predictions most remarkable come to pass through this kind of animal: the demons seemingly not having power to effect as much in gentle animals as those wicked animals can in the other animals we have mentioned, for this reason, that these have a rite similar, not a vice properly, but as it were a vice. Wherefore if I wondered at anything else in Moses, I myself have wondered, and I deem it worthy of wonder, at this: that when he had perceived the diverse natures of animals, either taught by God those things which pertained to each animal in its affinity to animals and to demons, or led by his own knowledge to discerning the grades of animals, he pronounced impure all those things which were deemed by the Egyptians and other nations to have divine power; but on the contrary pure all those things which were outside that reckoning.

Thus Origen. — From which words it is drawn that when Moses either granted or forbade certain definite animals for sacrifice and food, he followed reasons partly physical, drawn from the nature of animals, which are touched upon by Plutarch in the Sympos. lib. 1. probl. 5. and by Aelian lib. 10. De animalibus c. 16., and explained more fully by St. Thomas 1. 2. quaest. 102, art. 6.; partly moral, taken from the instinct of animals, and declared by Aristeas in Eusebius lib. 8. De preparatione Evangelica, cap. 9., Philo lib. De Agricultura, Barnabas in epist. cap. 10., and Theodoret quaest. 2. in Levit. etc.: and he regarded especially the customs of the Gentiles, particularly the Egyptians: against which he established many things in opposition, as Manetho says in Josephus lib. contra Appionem, and Tacitus confirms hist. lib. 5., asserting that to the Jews all things are profane which among the Gentiles are sacred, and that there is given up by them the ram as it were in contempt of Ammon, and that the ox also is immolated which

the Egyptians worship as Apis. Therefore Moses, taught by God, pronounced impure, or appointed for sacrifices, certain kinds of animals which either are by their own nature rapacious and cunning, or were wont to be usurped by the Gentiles for profane cults, as the most illustrious Ludovicus Ferrandus aptly observes in his notes on psalm 18.

You will ask: why did God command ears of grain, fine flour, and things like these of small worth and price to be offered to Him? — I answer that He ordained it out of indulgence and supreme goodness, because He wished provision to be made for the poverty of the offerers, so that he who could not offer a quadruped should offer a bird, who could not offer a bird, should at least offer bread, who could not offer bread should at least present flour or ears of grain. But of those things which come forth from the earth God required especially in sacrifices those which come into the use of men: whence bread was offered, because the food of man; wine, because drink; oil, and salt, because the seasonings of food: incense, because a medicine. Now all these figured Christ: bread indeed, because He was the living bread, who even as in the ear of grain under the state of the law of nature was in the faith of the Fathers; as the fine flour in the doctrine of the Law, and of the Prophets: just as truly the bread come down from Heaven was formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin, and baked in the oven of the Passion. Wine moreover was the figure of His Blood, oil of the grace to be diffused by Him, salt of His divine wisdom, incense of His perpetual and most fervent prayer.

You ask thirdly. — Why did God, Levit. 2, forbid honey and leaven to be offered to Him? — Our Alexander of Hales answers that this was so, both because these things were wont to be offered in the sacrifices of idols, and also in order that it might be signified that those who intend to sacrifice ought to remove from themselves all carnal sweetness and pleasure; and likewise to keep all corruption far from their sacrifices. Finally it must be observed concerning the sacrifice for sin, that the cheaper an animal was offered in it, the graver was the sin for which it was offered.

You ask fourthly: Why, among the animals forbidden to the Jews to be offered in sacrifice and taken for food, do they so greatly abhor swine before all others that they even judge themselves contaminated by their touch? — Plutarch feigns in the Symposia lib. 1, quaest. 5, that the swine is by no means held among the Jews as a thing execrable, but affirms that it is held in the highest honor among them, inasmuch as they venerate it as the mistress of tillage. He says they first learned this in Egypt: since there fields are never turned by the plow, but as soon as the Nile has withdrawn after its customary inundation into its channel, immediately swine are driven by the inhabitants into the fields, that they may break up the rich clod with their snout and hide the seeds in the earth: whence also the plowshare is called by the Greeks pyr, an excellent derivation. And what wonder, he says, that so foul an animal is worshipped by a superstitious people, since the Egyptians also adore the cat, the gryphon, the crocodile? But how shamefully Plutarch wanders in error it is needless to demonstrate at greater length, seeing that these are empty fictions of the Gentiles who, being ignorant of the affairs of the Jews, invented many things about them, of which there was not even a slight suspicion among the Jews. Petronius nevertheless agrees with Plutarch in this fiction, when he thus sported in a most ancient epigram: Iudaeus, licet et porcinum numen adoret, Et caeli summas advocet auriculas.

The genuine reason why the Jews abominate swine above all other animals, Peter Cunaeus judges in De Republica Hebraeorum, chapter 21, is to be sought from this: that the people of Israel was formerly wonderfully subject to those diseases which for the most part infested the Syrians and the Egyptians. For leprosy, scurf, and foul ulcers were long ago ascribed by the chief physicians to those peoples as their proper plagues. Moses, however, comprehended these and nearly similar diseases under one name, and called them leprosy. Now in swine, mange and uncleanness are not a defect but nature itself. Wherefore, lest any contagion of bodily corruption also be added through eating or touching, they turned away from it somewhat more superstitiously than perhaps the law of the Deity had commanded, or than was established in the institutions of other nations. — Yet in truth swine were marked out above all among the unclean animals, whose eating, touching, and offering were forbidden in the old law; whence in Isaiah 65 those eating swine's flesh are compared with worshippers of idols, and with those who consulted demons by the art of necromancy in sepulchres; for we read at verses 3 and 4: A people that provoketh me to anger before my face always: that sacrifice in gardens, and offer upon bricks: that dwell in sepulchres, and sleep in the temples of idols: that eat swine's flesh, and drink profane broth in their vessels. And at verse 17 of the following chapter those eating swine's flesh are likened to those who eat abomination and mice: that ate swine's flesh, and abomination, and the mouse.

Hence the enemies of the Jews took occasion either to persecute them sharply or to mock them insolently. Thus Antiochus, after he had sacrilegiously slaughtered swine in the very sanctuary of Jerusalem, ordered altars to be built throughout all Judaea, and swine's flesh to be immolated on them, as related in 1 Machabees, chapter 1, verse 50; with the threat of death he compelled the Jews to these impure and profane sacrifices. Hence the ministers of his own savagery and impiety compelled Eleazar, one of the chief of the scribes, to eat swine's flesh, that they might lead him away from the religion of his fathers, Machabees, chapter 6, verse 18. But every extremity the religious and generous man endured rather than yield obedience in this matter to the lost ministers of an impious king. Imitating the virtue of Eleazar, the seven Machabean brothers, together with their mother, having suffered many torments for the same cause, consummated their life by martyrdom. Hence it is that the Gentiles insolently seized the occasion of assailing the Jews with taunts and ridiculing them. For Juvenal, in satire 6, writes of them:

They keep sabbath where kings may not set foot, and the ancient mercy of their fathers indulges the swine. And satire 14: They worship nothing but the clouds and the numen of heaven, and think no difference exists between human flesh and swine's.

And in Macrobius, book 2 of the Saturnalia, chapter 4, it is related that when Augustus had heard that among the boys whom Herod, King of the Jews, had ordered to be killed below the age of two, his own son also had been slain, he said: better to be Herod's pig than his son — mocking him, namely, because he spared pigs who had not spared his own son. Nevertheless the Jews, mindful of the law handed down to them, both laughed at and disregarded these sarcasms of profane men. Therefore, when they began to breathe again from the tyranny of Antiochus, the Thalmudists relate in the book Iuchasin that they enacted this law: cursed be whosoever shall rear a swine. And they execrated this animal to such a degree that they deemed it unlawful even to name it by its proper name. Hence as often as mention of the pig had to be made, they substituted something else for this word "pig." From the Jews this preconceived aversion to this unclean beast was derived even to the Arabs. Concerning whom Solinus writes: they altogether abstain from swine's flesh: truly this kind of animal, if infected there, dies on the spot. Hence St. Jerome, book 2 on Ezechiel, chapter 6, writes concerning the Saracens, who were part of the Arabs: These deem it an abomination to feed on the flesh of pigs. Herodotus likewise writes of the Egyptians, book 2, chapter 47: they consider the pig an unclean animal; and if anyone even touches it in passing, he goes away immersed in the river with his very clothes. The reason for this Elianus relates, book 10 of his History, chapter 16: the pig, on account of its ferocity, spares not even its own offspring: and when it falls upon a human body, it does not abstain but devours it; therefore the Egyptians hate this animal as abominable and in every way to be shunned.

You ask fifthly: Why did God sanction in Deuteronomy 23, verse 18: thou shalt not offer the hire of a strumpet, nor the price of a dog, in the house of the Lord thy God, whatsoever it be that thou hast vowed, because both these are an abomination to the Lord thy God?

I answer that the price of a harlot is deservedly and justly forbidden to be brought into the temple and offered to the Lord, namely that the Israelites might guard against the wicked custom of the Gentiles, by which prostituted women were accustomed to offer gifts acquired from the gain of harlotry to fictitious Deities; namely that thence the structures of temples might be restored, priests nourished, victims redeemed, and to the honor of that obscene Deity they would expose their chastity to any mortal who came their way. This teaches us above all the prophet Baruch, chapter 6, verses 12 and 43 etc., in these words which the sacred interpreters greatly twist: But the women girt with cords sit in the ways, burning olive kernels. But when any one of them, drawn away by some passer-by, sleeps with him, she upbraids her neighbor that she was not thought worthy of ornament like herself, nor was her cord broken. And all things that are done by them are false. How then is it to be judged or said that they are gods? They were made by carpenters and goldsmiths, etc. Here there is question of women devoted to the cult of vain gods, who so that they might procure what was necessary for their ministers and sacrifices, sat in the ways leading to their temples, and by magical art tied love-knots from the long cords with which they were bound, so that they might bait men going to the temple into sound love, and make available their body, so that receiving payment as the reward of prostituted modesty they would consign it to their Deity. Herodotus hands down these things, who in book 1, chapter 199 reviews thus that impure rite of the Babylonian women:

To the temple of Venus sit many women, their brows crowned with knots and garlands, of whom some approach and others depart. Little lanes marked out everywhere by cords give access to those women to outsiders, each to be chosen as each shall please. Moreover, once they have sat down there, they do not return home before some stranger has thrown money into the woman's bosom, and has had intercourse with her, she being led apart from the sacred precinct. And that stranger who offers the money must say: I implore thee in the name of the goddess Mylitta. At that sumegtibi — but that money, however small it may be, it is not lawful to refuse: since it is turned to a sacred use.

That prophet Micheas confirms, chapter 1, verse 7, where he upbraids the Jews with this idolatrous and meretricious rite in these words: all her idols shall be broken in pieces: for they were gathered together of the hire of a harlot, and they shall return even to the hire of a harlot. Which St. Jerome expounds thus: the idols, gifts, ornaments, and idolatrous furniture, purchased with harlot's pay, shall be led to another harlot, Ninive: that they may meet an end worthy of their origin, and consumed by fire be reduced to nothing. Although this exposition lacks nothing in probability, it will not be beside the point here to interpose what Athenaeus somewhere left to memory: namely that the nations sometimes offered gifts to deities or temples from harlots. — But St. Jerome's exposition bears more closely upon our aim, for there is nothing more customary among idolaters than that certain women devoted to the cult of such deities should prostitute their chastity, so that they might vow the price of their impurity to the temples and altars of their idols. That the Egyptians were not entirely strangers to that love is gathered from Lucian in the book On the Syrian Goddess, where treating of the inhabitants of the land of Byblus he writes: Any one of the women who are unwilling to have their hair cut shall undergo such a penalty: for one day, indeed, they stand in the marketplace for the earning to be made with the body: but that marketplace is exhibited only to foreigners: and whatever pay they take from it, this is given to Venus as a sacrifice. Justin, History, book 22, is witness that the same custom prevailed in Cyprus, when he says: It was the custom in Cyprus for virgins before marriage, seeking dower-money on appointed days, to be sent to the shore for hire, that they might offer to Venus the first-fruits for the remainder of their chastity. A testimony akin to this Julius Firmicus offers us concerning the errors of profane religions, p. m. 15: I hear that Cinyras the Cyprian endowed the temple of his mistress with a harlot. Her name was Venus. He also initiated very many into Cyprian Venus, and also decreed that whosoever wished to be initiated, a handmaid of Venus being handed over to him secretly, should give a coin into her hand in the name of payment to the goddess. The same shameful custom of those Gentiles, both among the Greeks and among the Romans, Clement of Alexandria in the Protrepticus, Arnobius book 6 against the Gentiles, Athenaeus book 13, chapters 3 and 5, confirm in faith. You see also Martin Delrio, book of magical disquisitions, the Schedium on the German deities, Selden on the Syrian deities, and John Spencer, book 2 of De legibus Hebraeorum, chapter 23, from which we have lightly sampled these things. From all these it appears that God deservedly and justly rejected offerings acquired by the reward of the harlot, lest the Israelitic people should seize from it the occasion of frequently renewing lust, and dissolve into every license of a shameless life. For if God had accepted the price of fornication offered to himself, it would be easy for impure women to suppose that he did not entirely disapprove the commerce of lust, and would readily grant pardon for its commission. It is added that by this prohibition he willed to condemn the depraved rite of the Gentiles customary in the cult of Venus; for had he accepted the gifts of harlots and their sacrifices acquired from filthy gain, he would seem not to condemn even this shameless cult of the Gentiles.

On the price of a dog not being offered. — The Interpreters labor not a little in investigating and expounding the reasons and causes of this divine prohibition. For why did God reject rather the price of a dog, a domestic animal and symbol of fidelity and vigilance, than that of another brute of viler sort and less useful to man? Abarbanel, Junius, and other more recent writers think to untie this knot by saying that dog must be taken figuratively in this place, and that by that word the catamite is designated, or the boy of harlots and male prostitute, mention of whom had been made in the preceding verse in these words: There shall be no harlot of the daughters of Israel, nor whoremonger of the sons of Israel. But they judge that the catamite is here called a dog because this animal represents at once shamelessness and lust; for Martial calls a man devoid of shame a dog, book 1, Epigram 53. Yet since legislators are not accustomed to put forth their edicts in tropes and metaphors, but deliver them in proper words, lest any ambiguity occur in the law, this divine constitution seems to be understood literally of the dog properly so called. Wherefore Josephus, book 4 of the Antiquities, chapter 8, thinks that there is here forbidden to be brought into the temple of God the price accepted for a hunting dog or shepherd dog; to which interpretation Bonfrerius subscribes in his commentary. But since the interpretations of Josephus as an expositor of laws are for the most part erroneous and but little coherent with the genuine sense of Scripture; nor does any reason appear elsewhere why the price of such a dog, which is an animal equally salable as the rest, ought rather to be rejected than money acquired from the sale of others — St. Augustine, with whom Lyranus, Abulensis, and others agree, judges that the words of this law are to be understood of the first-born of a dog, of which an exception is made lest it be redeemed for a price like the first-born of other domestic animals. But since the dog, says Spencer, is accustomed to give birth in lurking-places, and to bring forth many puppies at one birth, so that scarcely can it be known which of them ought to be redeemed, that does not seem the genuine interpretation of the aforesaid law. It is added that God would not seem to have willed the law about redeeming the first-born of unclean animals, Numbers 18, to be extended to the vilest animals: for then the first-born kitten of a cat or ape would have had to be redeemed with a lamb, a dove, or perhaps a sicle — not without loss to the fortune of the poorer sort, and burdensome to men. The foregoing things demonstrate quite clearly that dog must here be taken neither figuratively, namely for the catamite or the sodomy of a dog, nor strictly, for the first-born dog; but properly and broadly, for every animal which we commonly designate by the name of dog.

But why God willed the price of the dog to be barred from his sanctuary, very many probable reasons occur: 1. Because the dog, although the most vigilant of animals, and most faithful to its master, was nevertheless reckoned among the unclean animals in the Mosaic law, Isaiah 66, verse 3. 2. Because it was esteemed the vilest and most abject of animals; whence the name of dog was turned into opprobrium and vituperation; hence in 2 Kings 3, 8, Abner answered Isboseth rebuking him because he had gone in to his father's concubine: am I a dog's head, etc. Wherefore formerly to bear the dog was an argument and punishment of ignominy, whence these verses:

For it is an ancient custom that, if anyone, the king being removed By blood, or flame, or the whirlwind of open sedition, Or by frequent plunderings of the kingdom daring to disturb it, Dares, before he receive the heavy punishment of spilled blood, If he shall be free, according to the ancient custom, An imposed dog upon his shoulders of the adjoining district He is compelled to bear through the countryside to its borders.

In which words Ursinus says: Nobles, he says, before they were subjected to capital punishment, were first stripped of their rank, as also their squires and servants, and it was disputed whether they should be made to ride publicly on those horses. In confirmation of which Guilielmus Saldenus, Exercit. 7., produces what is related by Otto of Freising, namely that a certain Hermann, count of the Rhine, was condemned by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, together with ten of his companions and other counts, because, while he was absent in Italy, they had disturbed the public peace by plunderings and disorderly conduct, so that for a whole German mile they should carry a dog. To carry a saddle was held a mark of sloth, to carry a dog a mark of contumacy. Hence it is that the French are accustomed to designate men of the lowest sort and rogues by this taunt and jest la Canaille, that is, to be counted no more than dogs. — 3. That dogs are among brute animals the most impure and the most shameless: most impure indeed, for Vossius says, lib. 3. De idololatria, cap. 62., that the lust of dogs is a thing best known to every domestic animal, and perhaps that is an argument of lust which, as Aelian relates, lib. 7. De animalibus, cap. 19., at Rome a husband accused his wife of adultery, and in the trial the adulterer was openly called a dog; and that too is well known, that they spare not even their own dams. Wherefore men who are obscene and of most impure life are likened to dogs, Ecclesiasticus 13. v. 22: what fellowship hath a holy man with a dog? And Matthew 7. v. 6: give not that which is holy to dogs. And Apocalypse 22. v. 15: without are dogs and sorcerers and impure. Wherefore the Hebrews abhor dogs no less than swine, on account of the impurity of both, as Lightfoot testifies on cap. 8. S. Matthew; nay, they even pronounce a curse upon those who keep dogs and swine. Therefore it cannot seem wonderful to anyone that God, most pure, would not have His worship polluted by the oblation of that most impudent and contaminated animal. — Moreover dogs are most shameless, whence Aelian, lib. 7. Historia animalium, cap. 19., says that of imprudence there are two animals by which men are repelled, the fly and the dog. Thence the Cynics took their name from the dog, because they were most shameless, and bit the other philosophers without ceasing. Whence Diogenes himself the Cynic, in Apuleius Florida 2., being asked why he was called a dog, answered: because those who give I fawn upon; those who give not, I bark at; the wicked I bite.

At the most weighty reason why God forbade dogs to be offered to Him in sacrifice, and rejected the price of a dog sold, is this, that He might recall the Israelites from the nefarious worship of the Gentiles, especially of the Egyptians; for as Plutarch relates in Iside, anciently the dog was held in the greatest honors in Egypt. And Diodorus Siculus, lib. 1., says that the Egyptians venerated certain animals beyond measure, not only living, but dead also, as cats, ichneumons, weasels, and dogs. Hence Juvenal, satyr 15., recounting the foolish and ridiculous worship of the Egyptians, sings among other things:

Here they worship the azure goddess, there the fish of the river, there whole towns worship the dog, no one Diana.

But they venerated the dog with so great religion that all the inhabitants of a house in which a dog died shaved themselves all over the body, which was with them the greatest token of grief. Moreover they cultivated him so earnestly, as Diodorus writes, because the dog is said to have helped Isis in searching out the body of Osiris, for which cause in the sacred rites of Isis dogs held the first place. Therefore, that God might expose so insipid a superstition to mockery and contempt, and might recall the Israelites, who were most prone to the manners of the Egyptians, from that nefarious worship, He forbade that the price of a dog should be brought into the temple. For this, like the hire of a harlot, is abomination before God. Therefore God reprobated the price of the harlot and of the dog joined together, both because the dog is the most salacious of animals, and because the Egyptians themselves and other nations worshipped the goddess Isis with acts of prostitution, and consecrated gain procured by whoredom to her temple. But Isis, a fictitious deity, was at the same time worshipped together with Mercury, because there intervened between the two a certain affinity, as Diodorus writes, lib. 1. Now Mercury was represented and worshipped by the Egyptians under the image of a canine head. Whence Virgil, 8. Aeneid.:

And the monsters of all the gods, and barking Anubis.

Now Anubis was the name of that Mercury whose idol was represented with a canine head, who among the Egyptians was held to be the author of letters and sciences; for the ancient Egyptians were wont to shadow forth under the hieroglyphic of a dog the prophet, scribe, magistrate, and judge, as Horapollo relates, hieroglyph. 39. The sacred scribe indeed, he says, because whosoever wishes to perform this office as is fitting and most perfectly must meditate on many things, and after the manner of dogs bark at all things unceasingly and be fierce, and gratify no one. But the prophet, because the dog beyond other animals is wont, fixed upon the images of the gods no otherwise than are statues, to gaze with intent eyes. But the minister of the sacred rites, because he also contemplates naked and shorn images, whereby he performs his offices. But how great was the affinity of Isis with that Mercury appears from an Egyptian column inscribed with these words, as Diodorus relates, lib. 1.:

I am Isis, Queen of this land, taught by Mercury. I am she that riseth in the star of the dog, etc.

But to enumerate more concerning these things at present is not expedient.

OF THE SACRAMENTS OF THE OLD LAW. — The sacraments of the old law were of a twofold kind: some indeed common to all the Israelites, such as circumcision, the Paschal lamb, the various purifications from legal uncleannesses, and the expiations for sins: others were particular to the priests alone and the ministers, such as consecration, the eating of the loaves of proposition, the washing of hands and of feet. For by sacraments men are in a manner deputed to the worship of God; but the worship of God regards generally the whole people of God, and specially the ministers. With respect to both, three things are necessary: First, that they be instituted unto such worship; and this circumcision performed in the people, consecration in the priests, and a special institution in the ministers of God. Secondly, that they use those things which pertain to divine worship; and this the people performed by the eating of the Paschal lamb, but the priests by the eating of the loaves of proposition, and also of other things set apart for their uses. Thirdly, that those things be removed which are forbidden in divine worship, such as uncleannesses; and with respect to the people this was done by purifications and expiations; but with respect to the others by the washing of hands and feet, and also by the shaving of hairs or locks. — Otherwise Hugo Victorinus distinguishes the sacraments of the old law.

Three kinds, he says, of sacraments are found to have been written under the law: some specially unto remedy, some unto observance, some unto divine > worship. The first pertain to the remission of sins, the second to the exercise of devotion, the third to the cultivation of piety. The first were instituted as it were unto necessity, that man might be sanctified in them, such as circumcision, and the victims for sin and for trespass, and certain others, which were instituted specially for cleansing and remission. But the second were proposed as it were unto exercise, that in them the devotion of the faithful might be exercised and merit increased, such as the peace-offerings, which were offered by the faithful to reconcile to themselves the divine grace. The third were instituted as it were unto a certain preparation, that they might be as it were certain instruments for handling and sanctifying the other sacraments, such as the tabernacle, and the court, and all the vessels contained in them.

For what further reasons was Circumcision ordained to be done only on the eighth day from the birth of the infant, with a knife only of stone, prescribed to Abraham alone, and not before, nor used from the going out of Egypt until the entrance into the land of promise?

TO ALL THESE QUESTIONS Alensis answers that circumcision was touched upon for various reasons as a cutting away of the extremity of the little skin of the virile member. The first reason, he says, is the enfeebling of lustful concupiscence, which flourishes in that virile member, both from the wound of circumcision and from the effusion of blood which takes place in it. The second is the exposure of that part, that is, of the pulp of that member to cold and to the rubbing of garments; from all of which it becomes less sensitive: just as hands accustomed to hard labors are thereby rendered less sensitive and less passible; now nothing in that part more diminishes and weakens concupiscence than the diminution of its sensuality and passibility. The third is directed to the abolition of the rites of Venus and Priapus: in which that part, as being a portion and occupation of Venus in the human body, was not a little adorned and worshipped; for this was the part of the flesh which fought most against the spirit, and had most contaminated the peoples of those lands, so that they rushed headlong into every infamy not only of males, but even of brute animals: as we read Leviticus 18: All these abominations did the inhabitants do, who were before you, and they defiled it. And again chapter 20: They have done all these things, and I have abhorred them. This plague of execrable and shameful lust nourished those seven execrable peoples who inhabited the land of promise before the coming of the sons of Israel in idolatry and above all held them fast in it. The fourth cause, or reason, is the strength of the impression of the memory of the Creator: for circumcision is a seal and an inseparable stigma, impressed with most grievous pain; and on this account it is the strongest memorial of the Savior. The fifth cause is the firmness of the pact with God; as we read: I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and between thy seed after thee in their generations by a perpetual covenant. And again: This is my covenant: every male among you shall be circumcised. Wherefore it is manifest that by this seal every circumcised one professes that he has entered into such a pact or covenant with God, and by the very reception of this seal he enters into the pact and covenant of Abraham: and by the very reception of it he binds himself, and constitutes himself debtor to the whole law which was given to the seed of Abraham, as the Apostle says: I testify to every man circumcising himself, that he is a debtor to the doing of the whole law, etc.; just as one who receives a sign, that is, the tonsure or habit of whatever religion, binds himself to it entire. — But why was it prescribed first to Abraham, and not before? The reason is, because idolatrous error abounding, Abraham was the first (as ancient histories relate) who recalled men from idolatry to the worship of the Creator: since therefore circumcision existed for this purpose, that by means of it the worshipers of the Creator might be distinguished from the worshipers of idols, the precept of performing circumcision was given first to Abraham. Besides, another reason is, because the express promise was first made to Abraham that the Redeemer would be born of his stock: when it was said: In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. But the seal of sanctification befitted that generation from which the Redeemer was to be born: hence it is that the precept of circumcision was given to Abraham and to his seed alone. — But why was circumcision commanded to be done on the eighth day from the birth of the infant? To this the reason is, because before the eighth day the tenderness of infants would not easily sustain so grave a wound without danger of death: but if it were deferred until the years of boyhood or of greater age, many would decline to receive it on account of the severity of the pain. — But why was it deferred from the going out of Egypt until the entrance into the land of promise? Such a reason is assigned: because perhaps there was no leisure for them, since they were either shaken by wars, or devastated by plagues, or divided by seditions, or harassed by murmurings, or pressed by other hardships: according to what John Damascene says. But the occasion for performing circumcision was when the people was established in the faith of Abraham, and the promises made to him had been obtained in part. For then the pact of Abraham had to be renewed and confirmed on the part of his seed, since it appeared firm on the part of God, and this through the exhibition of the promises. — But why was it done with a stone knife? The cause is, because sorcerers made incisions in their bodies with iron, especially in the rites of Mars; for the metal of iron was deemed by the vanity of idolaters the metal of Mars, and parts of him among metals: God therefore willed that this rite be exercised by something other than iron, that at least by this dissimilarity He might withdraw them somewhat from idolatry. Another reason is, that the covenant which the Lord had struck with them at the rock of Horeb might thereby be brought back to their memory: or because He had produced water for them from the rock, that in the sight of the worshipers of stones they might call it to mind. A third reason is, that in such stone knives they might read the hardness of their stony hearts at the very hour of circumcision: that thus they might be softened unto penance: and might feel inwardly, through compunction, the hardness of their hearts, even as the bodily hardness of knives of this kind through circumcision. — ON THE PASCHAL LAMB. As regards the Paschal Lamb, the natural reason of its institution was the commemoration of the benefit by which God led His people out of Egypt: for then it was prescribed to them that with the blood of the lamb they should smear the doorposts of their houses, as though protesting that they were withdrawing from the rites of the Egyptians, who worshipped the ram. In it, while it was set before the eyes of the Jews: First, the haste to depart from Egypt, which was also designated by the unleavened loaves which they were bound to eat, as though there had not been sufficient time for them to leaven: and that they should eat the lamb roasted with fire, because thus it was prepared more quickly: and that no bone should be broken, because those who hasten in passing do not linger over bones: which also was designated by the fact that their loins were to be girt, shoes upon their feet, staffs in their hands, whereby is signified man ready to make a journey, and by the fact that they were to eat in one house, nor carry the flesh forth without; because those who hasten to depart cannot send gifts. Second, the bitterness which they had suffered in Egypt, which was signified by wild lettuces. — The figurative reason was this: the immolation of the Paschal Lamb figured the immolation of Christ. The blood of the lamb delivering from the destroyer, the Blood of Christ by which we are delivered from sin: the flesh of the lamb was eaten to signify the eating of the Body of Christ in the Sacrament: they were roasted with fire, to signify that Christ in the Sacrament is the memorial of the Passion, or that He consumes all things with the fire of charity: with unleavened loaves, because those eating Christ must be pure and sincere; with wild lettuces, because of contrite heart; with loins girt, because chaste; with shoes on their feet, because having the examples of the dead Fathers: with staffs, because under pastoral guardianship; in one house, because in the Catholic Church, and not outside her.

ON PURIFICATIONS. As regards the ceremonies of purification from uncleannesses, and the expiations for sins, their institution and ordination rests upon a just and congruent reason; for men contracted interior uncleanness by sin, from which they were purged by sacrifices either offered for the whole community or also specially for the sins of individuals: not that these had of themselves the power of expiating, but because they signified the expiation to come through Christ, of which they were partakers through faith in Him. They contracted also an external uncleanness which was reputed first from men, secondly, from contact with unclean things. From among men there was reputed unclean whatever had any corruption, or was exposed to corruption: hence a corpse was unclean, a leper unclean, a woman suffering a flux of blood unclean, and men also unclean suffering a flux of semen through infirmity, through nocturnal pollution, through coition: the man was reputed unclean who had touched either a dead body or a leper. There was moreover an uncleanness in a house, in vessels, in garments, etc. They were purified commonly by ablution, and by certain sacrifices. — The literal reason of these purifications and expiations was: first, that with reverence they might handle those things which pertain to divine worship, and that the unclean might not approach them. Second, that approaching these sacred things but rarely, since they were oftener unclean, they might dispose themselves thereto with greater reverence and humility. Third, that they should not shrink from approaching divine worship as though fleeing the fellowship of lepers and others like them, whose disease was abominable and contagious. Fourth, because the Gentiles sometimes employed both human blood and semen in their sacrifices. — The figurative reason was, because by these various uncleannesses various sins were figured: mortal sin, which is the death of the soul, by the uncleanness of a corpse; heresy by the uncleanness of leprosy, for heresy is contagious like leprosy, and has truth mixed with falsehoods, just as in a leprous body sound parts and spotted parts appear: idolatry, by the woman suffering a flux of blood, on account of the blood of the sacrificers; vain speech, by the man suffering a flux of semen; original sin, by the uncleanness of coition and of the woman's childbirth; the softness of pleasures, by the menstruous woman; consent in another's sin, by contact with an unclean thing. So of the rest. — But because some were negligent both concerning these purifications and concerning expiations, it pleased God that once in the year, on the tenth day of the seventh month, a sacrifice of expiation should be made for the whole people, in which first the Priest offered for his own sin a calf and a ram for a holocaust; then for the people two he-goats, of which one was immolated to expiate the sin of the multitude: for the goat is a fetid animal from whose hairs are made prickly garments, and thereby is signified the pricking and the uncleanness of the goad of sin. And the blood of this goat immolated was carried in together with the blood of the calf into the Holy of holies, and with it the whole sanctuary was sprinkled, to signify that the Tabernacle was cleansed from the uncleannesses of the sons of Israel. But the bodies of the goat and of the calf immolated for sin were burned, to show the consummation of sins: not on the altar, because there only holocausts were burned, but outside the camp in detestation of sin. But the other goat was sent away into the desert, as if it bore away the sins of the people. The rite of the sending forth was that the Priest should lay his hand upon its head, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel. — Now the figurative reason of these things was this: Christ is signified by the calf on account of His power; and by the ram, because He is the leader of the faithful: and by the goat, on account of the likeness of the flesh of sin, because He was immolated for sins, and through His blood entrance lies open to us into the kingdom of heaven, even as the blood of the calf and of the goat is carried into the Holy of holies by the Pontiff. He suffered outside the gate, Hebrews at the end; even as the goat and the calf were burned outside the camp. The goat which was sent forth into the desert is, either the divinity which while Christ suffered, withholding its power, went as it were into solitude, or evil concupiscence, which we ought to cast away from ourselves, while we immolate our studious affections to the Lord.

ON THE INAUGURATION OF THE PONTIFF AND THE PRIESTS. — Ceremonies of a threefold kind were observed in the institution of the ministers. First, they were purified. Second, they were ordained and consecrated. Third, they were applied to the use of the sacred ministry. They were purified, I say, and that commonly by ablution with water, and by certain sacrifices: but specially the Levites shaved off all the hairs of their flesh. Pontiffs and Priests were consecrated in this order. First, when washed, they were clothed with special garments of their dignities. Second, the Pontiff was anointed on the head with the oil of unction. The Levites were offered to the Lord by the people through the hands of the Pontiff, who prayed for them. But of the lesser Priests only the hands were consecrated, because they were to be applied to the sacrifices; and from the blood of the immolated lamb there was tinged the tip of their right ear, and the thumb of the foot, or of the right hand: namely, that they might be obedient to the law of God in the offering of sacrifices, which is signified in the tinging of the foot and of the right hand. They themselves also and their garments were sprinkled with the blood of the immolated animal, in memory of the blood of the lamb by which they had been delivered in Egypt. — Now in their consecration there was offered a calf for sin, for the remission of the sin of Aaron committed in regard to the molten calf: a ram for a holocaust, in memory of the prayer of Abraham and his obedience, which the Pontiff ought to imitate: a ram as it were a peace-offering, in memory of the deliverance from Egypt: finally a basket of loaves, in memory of the manna granted to the people. Third, they were applied by the imposition upon their hands of the fat of the ram, of a cake of unleavened bread, and of the right arm: that it might be shown that they received the power of offering sacrifices to the Lord. But the Levites, by being brought into the Tabernacle of the covenant, as it were to minister about the vessels of the Sanctuary. — The figurative reason was, because those who are deputed to the ecclesiastical ministry ought first to be purified by the water of baptism and of tears, in faith in the Passion of Christ, which is an expiatory and purgative sacrifice. Moreover they must shave away all depraved thoughts, which are shadowed forth by the hairs of the flesh: to be adorned with virtues, and to be consecrated with the oil of the Holy Ghost and the sprinkling of the Blood of Christ. — It must be observed, however, that the Priests were especially clad in four garments while they fulfilled the sacred ministries; namely, breeches, a straight linen tunic, a girdle or belt, and a tiara or mitre or cidaris. The breeches, says Alensis, signified continence; the linen tunic, cleanness; the girdle, modesty; the mitre, rectitude of intention of mind. Besides these garments common to Pontiffs, saving some slight exception, the Pontiffs had four others proper to themselves, which simple Priests might not lawfully wear: first, the hyacinthine tunic, or pontifical one, at whose extremity toward the feet were placed in a circle certain little bells, and pomegranates made of hyacinth and purple and scarlet twice dyed. Second, the pontifical Ephod, or Superhumeral, which covered the shoulders and the front part down to the girdle; it was of gold, and hyacinth, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and twisted byssus, and upon its shoulders it bore two emeralds, on which were written the names of the sons of Israel. Third, the Rational, made of the same material, square, and placed on the breast, and joined to the Superhumeral: in this were twelve precious stones distinguished into four rows, on which also the names of the sons of Israel were engraved; thus it signified that the Pontiff bore them upon his shoulders and in his heart. Fourth, a plate of gold hanging on his forehead, on which was written the name of the Lord. — Now this diversity of garments, says Alensis, on the First Article according to Josephus, figured him to be the Minister and Pontiff of the Creator of all things. Whence according to what is touched upon Wisdom 18: The disposition of the whole orb was figured in the garment of the Pontiff; the linen breeches and the linen tunic, or one of byssus, figured the earth. The girdle signified the circuit of the Ocean: the hyacinthine tunic by its very color prefigured bronze: by the bells thunder was signified: by the pomegranates coruscations; the superhumeral by its variety the starry heaven: the two sardonyxes, the two hemispheres, or the Sun and Moon: the twelve gems on the breast, the twelve Signs and the Zodiac; and fittingly that which was in the midst was called the Rational: for all things are full of reason, and earthly things are disposed through heavenly ones: the Cidaris, the empyrean heaven: the golden plate, God presiding over all things. Will not this significations' fitness be laughed at? It must be said therefore that the variety of garments designated the variety of virtues with which the Pontiff needed to be fortified: the breeches signified continence: the byssine tunic, which through many beatings arrives at whiteness, interior cleanness through mortification of the flesh: the girdle, which binds the belly, continence and abstinence: the hyacinthine tunic, which is exterior and of ethereal color, heavenly conversation; but the cincture by which the tunic is bound, modesty of conversation: the superhumeral, obedience to the commandments: but the rational, divine science: the cidaris, intention of good will: the plate, on which the name of God is inscribed, figured perpetual memory or meditation of God.

ON THE PRECEPTS TO BE OBSERVED IN GARMENTS AND FOODS. — Finally there were certain rites to be observed by the people from precept in exterior garments, in the choice of foods, in divine worship. First indeed concerning the garments with which they ought to be clothed, many things were enjoined: thus Deuteronomy 22: A woman shall not be clothed with man's apparel, and a man shall not be clothed with woman's apparel. And chapter 22: Thou shalt not wear a garment which is woven of wool and linen. But the causes, says William of Paris in his book On Laws, chapter 13, of the prohibition that a man should use woman's apparel, or conversely, were many: The first was the congruence of nature itself, namely, that those whom nature distinguished by sex she also distinguishes by garments. Second, that opportunity might be taken away from the spread of shameful deeds. For a man might enter to a woman under womanly attire, and conversely a woman under manly attire: therefore by this distinction of dress much occasion for infamies was removed. Third, the extirpation of the rites of Mars and Venus. For in the rites of Mars not only were women clothed in manly vesture, but they were even armed, that in those warlike vestments, that is, arms, they might worship him as the God of war and giver of victory. And Cocceius the Greek, in an accursed book which he wrote on the stations for the worship of Venus, prescribed among other sacrilegious and God-hateful things, that whoever exercises that abominable rite should have a womanly crown upon his head. In like manner in the rites of Venus men were made effeminate, namely exercising the rites of Venus in womanly garments: believing and seeking by such sacrilegious rites to please Mars and Venus. The fourth cause was that a great occasion for the provocation of lust might be taken away; for great is the provocation of lust to men from womanly dress, and conversely; and this because womanly dress surrounding a man vehemently refreshes the memory and stirs the imagination of woman, and conversely. The fifth cause, that the occasion of sorcery might be taken away, with which those peoples were most replete and nurtured therein. For sorcerers and sorceresses were accustomed to work the sorceries of lust in garments, or out of garments; and this we often read in their books. Therefore that so great an occasion might be removed, God willed this confusion of dress among men and women. Sixth cause, that a dangerous error and superstitious credulity might be removed, by which they could be drawn to idolatry; deceived persons believed that by the application of womanly garments, especially in the rites of Venus, the hearts of women were joined to them and won by most strong love, for whose sake they did this, or who afterwards used such garments. Similarly deceived women believed the same of men and manly garments. God therefore willed this superstitious error to be removed from their hearts through the abolition of such confusion, lest at last they be drawn thereby to the worship of Venus. But the use of a garment woven of wool and linen was prohibited according to the letter, because priests of idols, especially in Egypt, used garments of this kind. The cause therefore herein was lest the people of God be assimilated to idolaters. Another cause was general, that idolatry, which was exercised by such mixtures, might perish on that very account. A third was, that the order of nature, which idolaters perverted in many ways, might be preserved in garments, namely that linen should be beneath wool, and nearer to the human body. Fourth, that in garments and their materials that very distinction which nature had made between them might be preserved, that a shirt by nature should be a shirt, and a tunic by nature a tunic, and so of others. For all these things we have spoken of idolaters confounded and commingled unto the veneration chiefly of the elements, whereof something we shall say in what follows; for it was said that all things of this kind were begotten from the mixture of the elements which they served, and from their confusion. — Many things also were prohibited with regard to food, for the law judged unclean Leviticus 11 the beasts which chew not the cud, or divide not the hoof. Likewise water animals which have not fins and scales. Likewise birds of prey, as the eagle and the race of ravens, and certain others, Leviticus 11; and universally all reptiles, as the gecko, the lizard, and other things which move upon the earth, as the weasel, the mouse, and the like, Leviticus 11. — Alensis brings forward these reasons of this prohibition, saying, in a general answer, that the reason was withdrawal from idolatry.

For those animals which the law judged especially unclean the idolaters had taken up, either in the rite of sacrifices or in veneration. For it is evident that from beasts, and birds, and water animals they figured images of idols: whence Exodus 20, on this account it is said: Thou shalt not make their similitude, which are in heaven above, as of birds: nor of those which are on earth beneath, as of beasts: nor of those which are in the waters, as of swimming creatures. Likewise it is evident that they made idols of reptiles in like manner: whence Isaiah 2: Man shall cast forth his idols wherewith he was offended, moles and bats: And Ezekiel 8: Entering I saw, and behold every similitude of reptiles and of animals, an abomination, and all the idols depicted there, etc. Hence it is that the law judged such things unclean; or because in such idols they sacrificed; hence the pig, which chews not the cud but divides the hoof, is judged unclean: because even still the pagans immolated pigs, and confirmed their covenants with the sacrifice of pigs: deeming them ratified in no other way than that those who contract or league together should pass through the midst of the parts of this sacrifice. In similar manner idolaters and sorcerers sacrifice the camel, which chews the cud but divides not the hoof, as we read in the book On Rings, i. of the Planets: so also the rest must be understood. For just as now it would be necessary by necessity to decree in those regions where the cat is said to be adored, that it not be found there, and that whoever was found having one would be gravely punished: for the same reason also in regions where the toad is said to be adored, if anyone finding a toad did not immediately kill it, he would have to be punished with grave chastisement: so God willed the aforesaid animals, which idolatry had usurped to itself, to be abominable to His people, that they neither eat them nor touch them.

Thus our Alensis.

ON THE SACRED TIMES TO BE OBSERVED IN THE OLD LAW. — Sacred times we call those which are prescribed for the religious worship of God by His own command or inspiration. But in the old law they were of a twofold kind: some indeed diurnal, namely certain fixed hours of each day to be spent in the veneration and service of God: others recurring only after several days. Of the former kind was the perpetual sacrifice, to be offered morning and evening, as God had prescribed in these words Numbers 28: These are the sacrifices which you ought to offer: two lambs of a year old without blemish every day for a perpetual holocaust: one you shall offer in the morning, and the other at even; a tenth part of an ephi of flour, which shall be sprinkled with purest oil, and have a fourth part of a hin. It is the perpetual holocaust which you offered on mount Sinai, for a most sweet odor of the incense of the Lord. And you shall libate thereof a fourth part of a hin for each lamb in the sanctuary of the Lord. Also the other lamb you shall offer in like manner at even, according to all the rite of the morning sacrifice and its libations, an oblation of most sweet odor to the Lord.

Concerning the same thing similarly He had thus ordained Exodus 29. v. 38: This is that which thou shalt do upon the altar: two lambs of a year old for each day continually etc. But this sacrifice was called perpetual or everlasting, because it ought to be offered continually each day as long as the Mosaic law held force. But this sacrifice, to be offered morning and evening, prefigured the twofold oblation of Christ: the one indeed at the beginning of the incarnation and in the first moment of our assumed humanity, concerning which S. Paul to the Hebrews, 10. v. 5: Entering into the world he saith, sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not, but a body thou hast fitted to me: holocausts for sin do not please thee: then said I, behold I come. The other on the cross; for the Apostle says in the same place, chapter 9. v. 11: But Christ being present a Pontiff of things to come, through a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation; neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood entered once into the holies, having found eternal redemption etc. But in this sacrifice rather an unblemished lamb than any other animal was to be offered, because it was the type of Christ the Lord who is called the Lamb in Apocalypse. Whence Origen, homily 2? on Numbers. He is called a lamb because his will and goodness, whereby he reconciled God to men and gave indulgence of sins, was such toward humankind, as it were the host of a lamb immaculate and innocent, whereby divine things are believed to be appeased toward men. To these S. Augustine is added, chapter 1. book 21. of Sentences: A lamb, he says, is chosen, that simplicity and innocence may be designated: a male is sought, that strength be approved; unblemished, that it be without crime etc. By which he indicated the perfect figure of Christ, and represented His innocence and meekness and voluntary oblation: for Isaiah says, chapter 53: He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer etc. — In this sacrifice likewise flour, oil, and wine were offered, because Christ willed not only to be immolated in a bloody sacrifice upon the altar of the cross, but also in an unbloody one in the Eucharist, sacrifices administered through the hands of priests of the new law, ministers of His everlasting priesthood according to the order of Melchisedech: and because this ought to be a pledge of His surpassing love toward us, He had commanded oil to be mixed in it as the symbol of His divine charity. But the measure of flour was larger than that of wine, because more ought to partake of that divine benefit under the species of bread than under the species of wine. — The sacred times recurring after some period were the festal days, which can be distinguished into three kinds, namely weekly, monthly, and yearly. Weekly was the solemnity of the seventh day called sabbath, of which enough has been said above. The monthly festal days were the feast of the first day of each month, called by the Hebrews the beginning of the month; by the Seventy Interpreters Neomenia, a compound name from the words neos, that is new, and men, that is month, so that Neomenia means as it were new month; or apo tes selenes, from the moon, because the Hebrews began their months for the most part with the new moon. Whence Philo, book On the Septenary: At the Neomenia the sun begins to illumine the moon with sensible splendor, while she herself then discloses her own glory to beholders. To this Maimonides sings in accord in hilkoth hachodesh, that is the sanctification of the kalends, where he writes: This is the constitution of Moses on mount Sinai, that as long as the sanhedrin should endure they should constitute Neomenias according to the aspect of the moon, that is, its appearance. He teaches in the same place that the Hebrews computed the beginning of the month from the first moment of the moon's appearing, so that when the moon appeared at the appointed time, namely the thirtieth night of the hidden month, that month consisted of twenty-nine days; but the following day was the first of the month beginning; if truly on that night she appeared not, the former month consisted of thirty days, but the subsequent day was the first of the month beginning. But that these things might be certain, the senate of Jerusalem had astronomical tables, by whose benefit it knew whether the new moon would appear on the thirtieth night or still lie hid: moreover it delegated trustworthy men to inspect and report whether the rising moon had shone forth; but if by the astronomical tables they perceived the moon could not appear on the thirtieth night, they did not await the report of the inspectors, but absolutely decreed that the following day was the first of the month beginning. — But that this might be known to the other cities alike, the senate commanded fires to be lit upon the summits of mountains, that there might be an indication of the Neomenia to be celebrated. But when the Samaritans, enemies of the Jews, sometimes lit similar fires, that by this artifice they might mock them and lead them to celebrate the Neomenias on another day than was right, that senate, lest such a prejudice arise, delegated couriers to the principal Jewish cities, to announce that the new moon had appeared and that the Neomenias ought to be celebrated. This same rite of celebrating the Neomenias spread abroad among the Gentiles, testifying S. Isidore book 5. of Etymologies, chapter 33. Among the ancients, he says, the beginnings of all months were honored, as also among the Hebrews. Hence of Homer Herodotus relates in his life that at the Neomenias he was wont to betake himself to the houses of the rich, that he might experience their munificence. Macrobius also writes, book 1. of Saturnalia, chapter 15, that in ancient times this charge was delegated to the lesser pontiff, that he observe the first aspect of the new moon, and having seen it announce it to the king of sacred rites, that is, to the pontiff. To this also pertain those verses of Virgil, 6. Aeneid.

.... such as he who at the month's first arising Either sees, or thinks he has seen through veiling clouds the moon.

But in what manner the Neomenias were to be celebrated Moses declares Numbers 28: But at the kalends you shall offer a holocaust to the Lord, two calves of the herd, one ram, seven lambs of a year old without blemish, and three tenths of flour sprinkled with oil for a sacrifice for each calf: and two tenths of flour sprinkled with oil for each ram: and a tenth for a tenth of flour with oil for a sacrifice for each lamb etc. — But although public sacrifices were made at the Neomenias, yet there was not by precept a ceasing from every servile work on them, although most abstained from them on account of the solemnity of the day, to which they were invited with the clangor of trumpets, according to that Numbers 10: If ever you shall have an assembly, and festal days and kalends, you shall sound with trumpets over the holocausts and peace-victims, that they may be to you in remembrance of your God. To which also pertains that Psalm 80: Sound with trumpet at the Neomenia, on the notable day of the solemnity of you. — But this solemnity was celebrated in thanksgiving for the benefit of divine governance, says S. Thomas 1. 2. question 102. article 4. ad 4; and Lyranus adds upon that Numbers 28. But at the kalends etc.: Therefore it was made at the neomenia, because change in these lower things appears more according to the renewal of the moon than at other times; and therefore this feast is celebrated at the newness of the moon, but not in its fullness, lest the worship of idolaters be imitated, who sacrificed at such a time of the moon. Other reasons of this instituted solemnity can also be brought forward, namely that just as God willed first-fruits of things born from the earth to be offered to Himself, so likewise He willed the first-fruits of time to be consecrated to Himself, as each month revolved through the revolution of that star whereby times were distinguished among the Jews. And moreover that God, appeased by prayers and sacrifices, might make by His blessing that all things succeed prosperously and auspiciously. — The yearly feasts were of a twofold kind: for some recurred every year, others only after a certain period of years were anniversary festivals, in which every male by the command of God was bound to appear with oblations and gift before the Lord. Most famous were Pasch, Pentecost and the feast of tabernacles, which although they were instituted in memory of past benefits, as Pasch in memory of the deliverance from Egypt; Pentecost for recalling the grace of the Law handed over and received; Scenopegia truly or the feast of tabernacles in memory of divine protection during the time of the sojournment of the Israelites in the desert; were nevertheless type and adumbration of spiritual benefits to be granted through Christ: thus Pasch prefigured and promised deliverance from Egypt, and deliverance from the power of hell, and it shadowed forth the immolation of Christ, 1. Cor. 5. 7; 1 Petr. 1. 18. 19. Pentecost the sending of the Holy Ghost, and the inscription of the law on tables of hearts through the same Spirit, 2. Cor. 3. 5. 6; Jerem. 31. 32. Scenopegia the sojournment of the pious man through this world's desert toward the heavenly fatherland. Hebr. 11. 13. — To these three feasts all the Israelites were bound to come together, especially men who were sound of mind and health. Moreover the Thalmudists, treating of Chagigah, that is, the festal day, assert that that was a singular benefit of divine Providence and as it were an assiduous miracle, that those who went to those feasts, leaving behind at home only the aged or infirm, or women and children, found their goods safe and untouched upon their return. R. Nathan adds in Aboth: On those days, he says, ten miracles were shown to our fathers in the sanctuary. No woman suffered miscarriage on account of the odor of the flesh of victims. No one ever dug a garden-bed at Jerusalem: nor did anyone ever fall at Jerusalem: nor did abortion ever happen at Jerusalem: nor did anyone ever say to another: I find no fire at Jerusalem at which to roast my paschal lamb: nor did anyone ever say to another: I find no bed at Jerusalem wherein I might recline: nor did anyone ever say to another: my lodging is too strait at Jerusalem etc. — The feasts recurring after a certain period of years were first, the sabbatic year, to be celebrated every seventh year, as is prescribed Leviticus 25, in which there was an intermission of the cultivation of the land, since in it neither were crops sown nor trees cultivated; but whatever the earth or the trees put forth from native fecundity redounded to the relief and use of the poor, as is provided Exodus 23, where concerning the tillers of the land it is decreed: but in the year thou shalt let it alone, and shalt suffer it to rest, that the poor of thy people may eat, and whatsoever shall be left, the beasts of the field shall eat it. The same shalt thou do in thy vineyard and in thy olive-yard. That the Israelites might accomplish this more easily, God had promised Leviticus 25 that He would give a blessing to the earth in the sixth year so that it should make fruit for three years. Second, in that year all servants originating from the Hebrews were manumitted and recovered liberty, as is provided Exodus 21: If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve thee, in the seventh he shall go out free gratis. For if the servant was a foreigner, he was never manumitted, Leviticus 25: Let bondmen and bondmaids be of the nations that are round about you: and of the strangers who dwell among you, or who were born of them in your land, these you shall have for slaves, and shall transmit them by hereditary right to posterity, that you may possess them forever. Third, all debts were remitted, Deuteronomy 15: In the seventh year thou shalt make a remission, which shall be celebrated in this order: He to whom anything is owed by his friend, or neighbor and brother, cannot demand it again, because it is the year of remission of the Lord. Of the foreigner and stranger thou mayst exact; but of thy citizen and neighbor thou shalt not have power to demand. — But most famous of all was the jubilee year, to be celebrated at the revolving of every fiftieth year, in which took place manumission of servants, remission of debts, and restoration of sold goods, whereby were prefigured the surpassing benefits to be granted to us through Christ: namely liberty from the servitude of sin, the devil, and death, as appears Luke 4. v. 18; and Rom. 6. v. 13(?); then the remission of spiritual debts, namely of sins, Rom. 8. and Coloss. 2. v. 14; besides, the restoration of spiritual honors lost in Adam, Rom. 5. v. 15. and 20. — I pass over the other feasts of the Jews which were of lesser celebrity, such as the day of expiation, the day of purity and of gathering, the day of Encaenia or of the dedication of the temple of Solomon, the day of victory over Nicanor, the day of lots on account of the deliverance of the Jews through the favor of Esther etc.

ON FORENSIC LAW. — The judicial precepts of the old law are those which, not by reason alone but from the institution of God, had power of binding men in their order toward one another. But a fourfold order could be found in any people. First, of the princes of the people toward subjects. Second, of subjects toward one another. Third, of those who are of the people toward strangers. Fourth, finally, toward domestics. Therefore judicial precepts of the old law can be divided into as many modes. Concerning princes the old law fittingly ordained; for, as S. Thomas says, in a good ordination of princes two things are attended to. The first is, that all have a part in the principate, because thereby the peace of the people is preserved, and all love and keep such an ordination. The second is the summit of rule or principate, whose species although diverse, yet the chief rule is that in which one rules according to virtue, and Aristocracy in which some few rule according to virtue: whence the best ordination of Princes is in some city or kingdom, in which one is set over according to virtue, who excels all, and under him are some ruling according to virtue, and nevertheless such a Principate pertains to all: both because they can be chosen from all: and also because they are chosen by all: and thus God had disposed concerning the Principate of the old Law; for Moses and his successors governed the people as it were singularly ruling over all, which is a kind of species of kingdom. But 72. Seniors were elected according to virtue, and these were elected from all the people.. But the election of the Prince he did not leave to the people, but reserved to himself, as appears in the case of Moses, the Judges, and Kings, for this cause, because that people was governed under God's special care: nor did He constitute Kings in full power from the beginning, but Judges and Governors, lest such rule degenerate into tyranny, which happens chiefly if they be cruel and avaricious: such were the Jews: whence He granted a King only as it were indignant at the petition of the people. 1. Kings 8. Yet from the beginning He instituted concerning the King to be elected: First, the mode of election, which consisted in this, that the judgment of the Lord be awaited, nor should anyone of another nation be elected King. Second, how constituted Kings ought to comport themselves toward themselves, toward God, and toward subjects. Deuter. 17. — Concerning subjects toward one another He fittingly ordained: for by just prescriptions order was made concerning the communion which they ought to have mutually. This is twofold: one which takes place by authority of Princes, another which takes place by proper will of private persons. Concerning both the law provided sufficiently: concerning the first by instituting judges, the order of judgment, the number of witnesses, and certain persons for sales, successions, care of parents, and the like. Read S. Thomas treating of these more fully after his manner, excellently qu. 105. art. 2. — Concerning subjects ordered toward strangers He fittingly pronounced: for conversation with strangers can be in two ways: peaceful and hostile; statute was made concerning both ways. Concerning the first, both when foreigners passed through their lands, and when they dwelt among them, prohibiting that they be not saddened, or molestation inflicted upon them, Exodus 22. and 23.; and when they wished to be admitted wholly into their fellowship, provision was also made that they neither be admitted at once nor so altogether excluded; yet certain ones were altogether excluded, because enemies most hostile, such as the Amalecites. Concerning the second however, before they entered war peace was offered: Deut. 20. Second, it was prescribed that war once begun be prosecuted bravely. Third, that the aforesaid impediments be removed, sending back to home certain ones who might supply impediments. Fourth finally, that they use victory moderately, sparing women and little ones, and not burning the fruit-bearing woods of the region. Read S. Thom. art. 3. — Finally as regards domestics the old law fittingly ordained; for concerning domestic persons there are three combinations: namely, of lord toward servant, of husband toward wife, and of father toward son. Concerning the first He fittingly ordained, both concerning those labors moderately to be imposed, and concerning penalties to be inflicted, and concerning the dismissal of those who were of the people: concerning the second He also fittingly ordained, commanding that a wife be taken from the same tribe, lest tribes be confounded; that a brother take the wife of his deceased brother without children, being about to raise up seed to his brother; that foreigners not be received in marriage on account of danger of seduction, nor kinswomen, on account of that natural reverence owed to them: that nothing public of necessity be enjoined upon the newly married whereby he might freely rejoice with his wife and establish friendship; that wives be not lightly defamed; that out of hatred a man afflict not his wife; but rather dismiss her, and that he accomplish this only by written scroll: that finally on account of hatred of the wife the son suffer no detriment. Concerning the third finally, that fathers instruct sons in disciplines and morals, lest they be vacant to revelings and wantonnesses. The rest see in S. Thomas.

Note 1. The Mosaic law can be considered according to a threefold difference of time, in which it first lived, secondly died, and thirdly became deadly. It was, I say, first living, and had the power of binding those to whom it was prescribed, namely the Israelites immediately from its constitution and promulgation; whence God through Moses appointed to its observers a most ample reward, but to its transgressors a punishment, as is seen in Deuteronomy 28, whereby He signified that He sincerely wished the observance of this law. Moreover, the vigor of this Mosaic law persevered until the birth of Christ the Lord. For then it began to be weakened and to languish, whence Christ the Lord says in Matthew 11, verse 13: All the prophets and the law prophesied until John, namely the Baptist, who, like the dawn of Christ the Lord, the sun of justice, foretokened the rising and office of the new Legislator of mankind. Finally, however, that vigor was extinguished and wholly dulled in the death of Christ the Lord, when, namely, He fulfilled in very deed all things that were written of Him, the prophecies of the prophets, and voided and extinguished by the bloody sacrifice of His death the utility and efficacy of the sacraments and sacrifices of the Mosaic law. But it began to be deadly when, on account of pseudo-apostles contending that the Mosaic law was to be kept together with the Gospel, the Apostles decreed that the faithful newly converted to Christ ought no longer to attend to the Mosaic precepts, inasmuch as these were now of no avail for salvation. When indeed this was decreed must be determined here.

Note 2. That the Old Law was truly prescribed to the Jews alone, nor were the Gentiles bound to its observance by any reason whatsoever: which certainly is gathered from that passage of Deuteronomy 4: What other nation so illustrious, that hath ceremonies and just judgments? Psalm 75: God is known in Judea: Psalm 147: He hath not done in like manner to every nation, and his judgments he hath not manifested unto them. This same truth the Apostle clearly demonstrates in Romans 3, where, declaring the prerogatives with which the Jews were divinely endowed, he says: What advantage therefore hath the Jew? Much every way; first indeed, because the words of God were committed to them: and under the words of God he comprehends chiefly the law, which was given to the Circumcised alone, and therefore the Gentiles were barred from entrance into the temple and from participation in that law, unless they were circumcised: but the Gentiles were not obliged to be circumcised, rather it was free in their will and choice, as appears in Exodus 12: And if any stranger be willing to sojourn in your colony, and to keep the phase of the Lord, all his male kind shall first be circumcised, and then shall he celebrate it rite: and he shall be as one that is born in the land. But if any man be not circumcised, he shall not eat thereof. Now this special prerogative of the Jewish people above the Gentiles was not granted them by God on account of their merits and their faithful observance of Him, but out of the mere liberality of God specially choosing this people to Himself before others, because Christ was to arise from it; which indeed Moses declared in Deuteronomy 9, where, addressing the Jewish people, he says: Know therefore that the Lord thy God hath not given thee this most excellent land to possess for thy justices, for thou art a very stiff-necked people. Remember and forget not how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of Egypt until thou camest unto this place, thou hast always strove against the Lord. But it was fitting that that people, from which Christ was to arise, should shine with special holiness and with God's peculiar love... Hence Moses, appealing to the Jewish people in Deuteronomy 4, says: You have heard his words from the midst of the fire, because he loved thy fathers, and chose their seed after them. That seed, I say, that blessed one, namely Christ the Lord, in whom all nations were to be blessed.

Note 3. That although the old law was prescribed to the people of the Jews alone, that they might observe and keep it, nevertheless it looked not to the Jews alone, but chiefly to Christians: for the promises and gifts made in that law are on account of the true Israelites, and sons of Abraham, not those who are born according to the flesh, but those who are sons of Abraham according to faith, as the Apostle proves in many places, especially in Romans and Galatians. Hence St. Augustine notes admirably in book 4 Contra Faustum that the land of Chanaan, granted by God to the Jews, can be taken in two ways: either in itself and as some sensible good, in which way it looked only to those who are Jews according to the flesh; or inasmuch as it is a figure of an invisible good far better and more excellent, and thus it pertains to Christians. That the promises of temporal things are contained in the Old Testament, and therefore it is called the old testament, none of us doubts, he says, and that the promise of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven pertain to the New Testament: but that in those temporal things there were figures of things to come, which were fulfilled in us, upon whom the ends of the world are come, is not my suspicion, but the Apostolic understanding, Paul saying when he spoke of such things: all these things happened to them in figure: and again: Now all these things happened to them in figures: but they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Therefore we received the Old Testament not for attaining those promises, but for understanding in them the annunciations of the New Testament: for the significance of the old commends faith to the new. These things being premised, three things remain to be determined: First, whether the obligation and virtue of the old law has truly now ceased. Secondly, when exactly it ceased to be in force. Thirdly, finally, whether as soon as it ceased to be in force, its observance became deadly.

First Conclusion. — THE MOSAIC LAW HAS BEEN ABROGATED IN FACT, AND HAS ALREADY CEASED TO BIND. This is defined by the faith delivered by the Apostles in the Council of Jerusalem convoked that this question might be resolved, as we read in Acts 15, in those words: It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary things, etc.

And St. Paul proves this truth in many places in Romans: for in chapter 6 he says to the faithful who have been baptized: For you are not under the law, but under grace. And in chapter 7 he declares this by the example of a wife, who by the death of her husband is freed from his law: whence he concludes: Therefore, my brethren; you also are become dead to the law, by the body of Christ. And to the Galatians he inculcates the same in various ways, chapters 2, 3, and 5, but especially in these words: if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

Hence afterwards: You are deprived of Christ, you who are justified in the law. Which certainly signifies that the grace of Christ the Lord does not profit him who judges circumcision to be necessarily to be kept. Likewise the Apostle says to the Hebrews 7: For the priesthood being translated, it is necessary that a translation also be made of the law: and yet the priesthood of the old law was translated into the priesthood of the new law: for whereas before there was the Aaronic priesthood, there was made the priesthood of Christ, who is called a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech: therefore also the old law itself passed over into the new, and thus it ceased in fact, and was abrogated.

Proof 2. That law is abrogated and ceases to bind, especially when it no longer prevails with respect to those for whom it was enacted: but the old law ceased to bind the Jews, to whom it was chiefly prescribed: therefore truly it ceased to bind. The major stands: both because to be loosed and to be bound are said with respect to the same thing, otherwise they would not be opposites; and also because it involves a contradiction that some law be judged abrogated, and yet prevail with respect to those to whom it was prescribed. But the minor is proved: First, because the old law was not given for eternity, but only, as the Apostle has it in Galatians 4: Until the fulness of the time should come. Therefore, at the coming of the fulness of time through Christ, who was born in the middle of the ages, the ancient law at once ceased. Secondly, from the same Apostle: The law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things: but shadows cease at the rising of the Sun, and cease while truth appears. Hence St. Bernard, homily 1 super Missus est: As the fruit comes forth, the flower falls away, because, the truth appearing in the flesh, the figure has passed away. Or as Jerome says on chapter 1 of Galatians: Before the Gospel of Christ shone forth in the whole world, the legal precepts had their brightness: but after the greater light of Gospel grace shone forth, and the sun of justice showed itself to the whole world, the light of the stars was hidden, and their rays grew dark. Theodoretus has similar things on Philippians 3, where he writes: The lamp is superfluous if the Sun has appeared: the Pedagogue is superfluous for those who have received perfect wisdom: the nurse is useless to those who grow on solid food. The chaff bears the wheat, but after the wheat has been gathered, the chaff is cast out; so the law pointed out Christ, but after He appeared, it is thereafter superfluous.

Proof 3. That law is judged abrogated which was to endure only for a time, and was bound to prevail until the institution and promulgation of another law succeeding it: but the Mosaic law was bound to prevail only until the institution of the Evangelical law: therefore, this latter being instituted, the former ought to have ceased. The major stands. The minor is proved by all those testimonies of sacred Scripture in which God had foretold that a change of the law and of the state of the people was to be made at the advent of the Messias. Thus through Malachy chapter 1: I have no will in you, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation. By which words it is plainly foretold that that entire cultus of the sacrifices of the old law was to be rejected by God, and changed into another most pure, as the Council of Trent expounds, session 22, chapter 1. Likewise Jeremias signified it, chapter 23, where, having premised the promise of the Messias in these words: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch, etc., he adds: Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, and they shall say no more: The Lord liveth, which brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt: but: The Lord liveth, which brought and led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries: by which words the Prophet signifies that the Gentiles were to come to the Messias and be converted. Finally, this same truth is proved by all those texts of Scripture in which God had once promised that He would give a new law, such as that of Jeremias 31: Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda: where by the name of covenant He signifies the law. Hence He subjoins: I will give my law in their bowels. For by these words God signified that He would at some time institute and give a new law which would dissolve the former, as St. Paul gathers most excellently in Hebrews chapter 8, where, having premised the aforementioned texts of the Prophet, he concludes: Now in saying a new covenant, he hath made the former old. And that which decayeth and groweth old is near its end.

You will say 1. A law once enacted and promulgated is not abrogated except by express revocation, or by a later law incompatible with the former: but in the new law enacted by Christ no express revocation of the old law is read, nor are those laws incompatible, but can be observed together: therefore the latter did not revoke the former, especially with respect to that people whom the old law bound.

I answer 1. The major can be denied; for, besides those two ways of abrogating a law, a third is found, namely that a law ceases through a change and succession of times, when it was enacted only for a determined time, and on account of some end which, once posited and attained, it ceases to bind: now such was the old law, for it was prescribed only for a time: and until the seed should come, that is, Christ, as St. Paul says in Galatians 3; for the end of the law was Christ, as the same Apostle teaches in Romans 10; and the same, that time being completed and that end attained, that law ought to have ceased without any other abrogation and revocation. Hence in Luke 16 it is said: The law and the prophets were until John.

I answer 2. Denying the minor, as regards the second part: for although Christ the Lord, in delivering the Evangelical law, did not add any formal words by which He might expressly signify that He was abrogating and revoking the precepts of the old law, nevertheless He truly abrogated that old law by His new law, as Paul signifies in Romans 3: It is excluded, he says, by what law? of works? No, but by the law of faith. And in Ephesians, saying: Making void the law of commandments expressed in decrees: for what he says "in decrees" means the same as by His decrees, or, as St. Chrysostom expounds it, by precepts, or as St. Jerome speaks, by the dogmas of the Gospel. Christ therefore abrogated the old law by His precepts and His new law. Nor was an express revocation necessary, says Suarez, book 9, chapter 10, number 15, because although the works of those laws may not seem formally to conflict, nevertheless the laws themselves fight against each other. First, because the new law is delivered by Christ as per se sufficient for salvation, and necessary: and straightway the obligation and necessity of the former law conflicts with it. Next, the observances of the Mosaic law were only figures and signs of the future mysteries of the Messias; but the Sacraments of the new law, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, signify that redemption through the Messias is no longer to be made, but made already, and accordingly they cannot subsist together with those signs which prefigured a future redemption. Finally, the former law was given to one people alone, that it might be distinguished and segregated from other nations: but the latter was given to all nations, that the Church might be gathered possessing a perfect unity from men.

You will say 2. The Mosaic law is said in the Sacred Letters to endure forever: therefore it ought never to have ceased anywhere. Proof of the antecedent from that passage, Gen. 17, where concerning circumcision God says: It shall be this my covenant in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. Likewise Exodus 12: You shall keep this day... solemn before the Lord in your generations with an everlasting worship. Psalm 101: He established it to Jacob for a precept, and to Israel for an eternal testament. Likewise Baruch 3: This book of the commandments of God, and the law that is forever.

I deny the consequence, and to the antecedent I say the word eternal is taken in the Scriptures in two ways. First indeed improperly, and for a long and longer time, though finite: thus Psalm 75: Thou shining wonderfully from the everlasting mountains. Second truly properly, for a duration which lacks beginning and end. Now the old law is called eternal in the former manner, because namely it was to endure for a very long time, and through many ages: or it is called perpetual and everlasting, because it was prescribed without a determined time, by which reasoning that is usually called perpetual which is prescribed without term, after the manner in which we said above in the first Disputation that laws properly so called ought to be perpetual. Or the old law is called everlasting and perpetual because by its nature it was indissoluble, nor could it be dissolved except through extrinsic causes and the supreme authority of God; after the manner also in which some thing which lasts only for the life of a man is usually called perpetual, as the bond of matrimony, religious profession, etc. Therefore thus the pact of the old law is called an everlasting covenant, because it could not be dissolved until it should be fulfilled: nor was that law to be abrogated except through the institution of the things which it prefigured, and these once instituted it straightway ceased to signify and prefigure. Or finally it can be said that the Mosaic ceremonial law is eternal and perpetual, not by reason of the signs and in itself, but by reason of the things signified and of the truth which was shadowed forth through them. For by this last reason the Mosaic law can be called perpetual, because the evangelical truths and the mysteries of the Christian faith were figured through those things which the Mosaic law contained, and these will persevere unto the end of the world, nay even into eternity, Christ the Lord saying, Matth. 24. v. 35: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass. By this reason the Apostle, ad Coloss. 2. v. 11, says circumcision was confirmed and ratified through Christ, and the faithful circumcised in him with a circumcision not made by hand, in the stripping of the body of the flesh, but in the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism. And 1. ad Cor. cap. 5. v. 7 he says the Pasch has been propagated through Christ. For, he says, Christ our pasch is immolated.

You will insist. That which is of divine right in itself is likewise unchangeable and perpetual in itself: but the Mosaic law is of divine right in itself, inasmuch as it was dictated and prescribed by God: therefore etc.

I distinguish the major: that which is of natural divine right is perpetual and unchangeable in itself, because it is founded upon divine holiness and equity — I concede; that which is of positive divine right is in itself perpetual and immutable — I deny. For since it is founded upon the sole will of God, which according to its nod and judgment establishes or changes things, this has no other consistency than what is sought from God's good pleasure, and can thereupon be changed according to his ordination, for he who gave the law by his judgment can revoke it. Moreover the Mosaic law, according to its ceremonial sanctions, is not of natural right but only of positive right, inasmuch as it was not prescribed by God through Moses for all men, nor at all times, but only for the Jewish people, and long after the beginning of things.

You will urge: Those things which are established by the divine will ought also to be steadfast and immutable, otherwise the divine will itself would be subject to variation and change. Therefore even though the Mosaic law was established by the divine will, it ought not the less to be unchangeable.

I distinguish the antecedent: If they are established for the purpose that they persevere forever, I concede; if only that they last for some determined time, I deny. Moreover God had prescribed the Mosaic law in those things which are ceremonial only for a determined time, namely until the truth should come, and the mysteries of the Christian faith succeed, of which the heads of that ceremonial law were types, shadowings, and figures. Whence that law was changed by the immutable will of God, who in that change did not begin to will what he willed not, nor did he cease to will what he willed, but fulfilled his eternal decree and counsel concerning the establishment of the law of grace.

You will add: So far is the Mosaic law from having been removed by the advent of Christ, that rather all the prophecies of the prophets promise the restoration of that law through the Messiah, as may be seen, Deuter. 30. v. 2 and 8, and Ezechiel. cap. 37. v. 24 and 10. Therefore the vigor of that law ought even to subsist together with the Evangelical law.

I answer, most of those oracles are to be understood of the restoration of the commonwealth of the Jews after various captivities, and especially after the Babylonian captivity; whence it is no wonder that in those prophetic oracles there is treated of the restoration of the temple, the altar, the sacrifices, and other rites of the Mosaic law. But if anyone wishes to interpret them of the state of the Church under the Messiah, as some few of those prophecies must be taken, I say those expressions are not to be understood literally; for they are symbolical, not proper: typical, not literal: to be expounded spiritually, and not carnally; so that Israel, in being restored, are the faithful to be regenerated through Christ and loosed from the captivity of the devil, and to be restored to the liberty of the sons of God; the city Jerusalem is the Church, which Saint Ioannes, Apoc. 21. v. 2, calls the holy city, the new Jerusalem; the rites, sacrifices and sacraments to be renewed signify the worship of God, and the sacrifice and sacraments to be frequented in the new law. Therefore while the prophets speak of the recall of the Israelites to their fatherland and their restoration, this can be understood partly literally, of the return from captivity, partly mystically and symbolically, and of the constitution of the Church of the New Testament, which is described through legal terms. For that they cannot simply be understood literally, this is sufficiently evident from the fact that these things have neither been fulfilled hitherto, nor can they be fulfilled, the temple once destroyed, Jerusalem laid waste, and the people dispersed.

You will say 3. A good law ought not to have been changed: yet the old law was good: therefore it ought not to have been changed.

I distinguish the major: a law good and perfect, nor ordered per se to another, ought not to have been changed — I concede; a law imperfect, and which was ordered per se to another more perfect — I deny. Such however was the Mosaic law, which was ordered only toward signifying the Evangelical law, which was sometime to be instituted.

From these things it appears that the old law was wholly abrogated as regards the ceremonial and judicial precepts which were prescribed in it, inasmuch as they had been consigned only for a time, namely unto the advent of the Messiah, since in the synagogue there was in figure the economy of the kingdom of Christ or of the Church; whence all those Mosaic sanctions obtain no further vigor among Christians, except insofar as they are conformable to natural right, or have been renewed and set forth anew through Jesus Christ the Lord himself or the constitutions of the Apostles, or through the edicts of the Church or of Christian princes.

As regards the moral precepts of this law, since they are of a twofold kind — some indeed capital and universal, regarding absolutely all men, as being consonant with the natural law, such as the precepts of the Decalogue; others particular and pertaining only to certain private men or to their particular state, as for instance the equity to be observed by judges, the gifts they must shun, etc., the purity and cleanness of body and soul required of priests, especially when they approach the sacred things, and so on with others — it is certain that the moral precepts of both kinds retain their force even among Christians, both because these are conformable to the dictate of reason and to the natural law, and because they were renewed by Christ or by the Apostles or by the Church. Hence St. Leo, sermon 11, De passione Domini, chapter 5, having declared the abrogation of the ceremonial precepts of the Mosaic law, subjoins: In the moral precepts, however, no decrees of the former Testament have been rejected, but many have been enlarged by the teaching of the Gospel.

From this arises especially the error of the Socinians, who contend that Christ the Lord condemned the moral law as imperfect just as He did the ceremonial and judicial law, or corrected it in certain points as less right, as may be seen in their Racovian catechism, chapters 1 and 2, as well as in Ostorod, De institutione religionis christianae, chapter 22, and Volkel, book 1, De vera religione, chapter 21. To these subscribe the Anabaptists and the Remonstrants — the latter indeed in their apology, chapter 12, the former in the colloquy of Thorn, chapter 1, discussion 10 and 11. All of whom contend that Christ the Lord emended the depraved moral precepts of the Mosaic law, and to prove this they bring forward various additions made by Christ to each of the precepts of the Decalogue, which they think is proved especially from chapter 5 of Matthew, where Christ the Lord, discussing many precepts of the Decalogue as they were in practice among the Jews, indicates how He wills them to be observed when He says: It was said to them of old etc., But I say to you etc. But in those words Christ indeed overthrows the false and erroneous interpretation of the precepts of the Decalogue given by the Scribes and Pharisees, but He does not affix another meaning to the words of the law, nor does He act as a new lawgiver but only as interpreter and vindicator of the law delivered through Moses; and He sets His sayings against, not the sayings or writings of Moses, but those of the Scribes and Pharisees, as they boasted that they had received them from the ancient doctors. This is clear: 1. from Christ's proposition, verse 20, where He speaks of the justice of the Pharisees: Unless your justice abound more than that of the Scribes and Pharisees. Therefore He intends to act against Pharisaic justice, not against the justice commanded by the law of Moses. 2. From His manner of speaking: He does not say, it is written in the law of Moses, or the law said to you, or Moses said to you, but you have heard that it was said to them of old by the Scribes, namely, or by the Pharisees, or of old. And thus He shows that He refutes only the traditions of the ancients, of which mention is made in Matthew 15, and the perverse interpretation of the Scribes and Pharisees, not the very law of Moses. Wherefore He did not emend the law itself, but vindicated it from depraved interpretations and commentaries, restored it to its former splendor and purity, and by adding certain appendices which were implicitly contained in it illustrated it more brightly. That this may be made manifest, each precept must be examined singly.

The first precept concerning divine worship was most wretchedly interpreted by the Scribes and Pharisees as referring to external worship alone, which they placed solely in civil matters, as sacrifices and other signs of ritual. But Christ declared its true and genuine sense when He said, John 4: True adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth.

Likewise the second precept, on not taking the name of God in vain, the Pharisees restricted to perjury on the part of one who had sworn by the name of God, and they loosened the rein for light and rash oaths in everyday speech, as also for oaths by creatures: as if no offense were committed against the law or the Lawgiver by swearing rashly and lightly, or even falsely, provided it were not by the name of God but by the name of some creature. And indeed he who had sworn by the name of God, or by gifts consecrated to God, would be bound; but not he who had sworn by the temple, by the altar, by similar things, Matthew 23, verses 16, 17, 18; such oaths could be made and violated with impunity. Christ rebuked these most false glosses, showing that neither vain and rash oaths are lawful, nor those which are framed by means of creatures, of whatever kind they may be, as appears from these words, Matthew 5, verse 34 and following: But I say to you not to swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God: nor by the earth, for it is his footstool: nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King: neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above is of evil.

Similarly the third precept, whereby it is provided that one must keep free from every work on the sabbath day, which doctors of the law interpreted so badly that they asserted that on that day it was not licit even to perform works of charity for the solace of one's neighbor. Wherefore, when Christ the Lord had cured on the sabbath day a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, the ruler of the synagogue, indignant that this miracle had been wrought on the sabbath, said to the crowd flocking to Christ that they might likewise receive health: There are six days in which you ought to work; in them therefore come, and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. Refuting this most wicked interpretation, Christ the Lord says, Luke 13, verse 15: You hypocrites, doth not everyone among you on the sabbath day loose his ox or his ass from the manger and lead them to water? And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo these eighteen years, to be loosed from those bonds on the sabbath day?

The fourth precept, concerning honoring parents, whereby it is established that they must be relieved in necessity, the Pharisees explained thus, that they judged it more fitting that offerings should be made to God than help rendered to parents, and that what could relieve the misfortunes of parents should be expended upon the worship of God. This perverse interpretation of the divine law Christ the Lord thus reproves and corrects, Mark 7: Moses said: Honour thy father and thy mother. And: whosoever shall curse father or mother, dying let him die. But you say: If a man shall say to his father or mother, Corban (which is a gift, whatsoever profit thou mightest have received from me); and further you suffer him not to do anything for his father or mother, making void the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and many other such like things you do.

As regards the fifth precept, on avoiding homicide, which the Pharisees thought satisfied if anyone had inflicted upon his neighbor neither death nor a wound; while moreover they deemed it licit to repay injuries with injuries, and to turn enmities into estrangements — but Christ the Lord rebukes this, Matthew 5, verse 21: You have heard that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not kill. And whosoever shall kill, shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire — by which He proscribes every affection of anger and revenge. Which He again confirms, adding, verse 38: You have heard, He says, that it hath been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil: but if anyone strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other. Nay more, that He may banish all animosities from His followers, He commands there, verse 44, that enemies are to be loved, that good is to be done to those who hate us, and that prayer is to be offered for those who persecute and calumniate us.

The sixth precept the Pharisees thought themselves to fulfill exactly if they did not invade and defile the bed of their neighbor. But Christ the Lord asserts there, verse 28, that by this precept not only outward filthiness and the defilement of the body through adultery is forbidden, but also the wicked concupiscence of a woman. Whosoever shall look, He says, on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.

As to the observance of the seventh precept, the Pharisees considered it sufficient if they did not altogether invade the goods of their neighbor; moreover they urged that their own possessions were to be guarded tenaciously and carefully. But Christ the Lord says there, verse 40: And he that will contend with thee in judgment and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him. And He cuts off every root of avarice and extinguishes the fuel of it when He says, Matthew 6, verses 19 and 20: Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth, where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven. Which indeed is done by dispensing generous alms to the poor, and especially by giving them even one's superfluities.

As regards the two last precepts, the Scribes and Pharisees judged that for their observance it sufficed if one did not attempt by study and craft secretly to seize his neighbor's wife and goods and claim them for himself for perverse pleasure and unlawful use. But Christ the Lord pronounces that even the desire of these things is unjust and wicked, saying that these affections must be utterly rooted out from the heart, inasmuch as those concupiscences lurking in the heart contaminate men altogether; for He says, Matthew 15: Things that proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man. For from the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies.

From all this it appears that Christ the Lord did not abolish but confirmed the observance of the precepts of the Decalogue, and that He interpreted it according to the intention and mind of the divine Legislator and prescribed its legitimate norm, whereby is proscribed the error of the Socinians, who renewing the heresy of the Manichaeans contend that the Decalogue, as well as the other precepts of the Mosaic law, was abolished by Christ the Lord.

Second Conclusion. — The Mosaic Law began to languish and to be weakened by the Birth of Christ, but it died and was extinguished only by his death.

Proof of the first part: First indeed from that of Luke 16: the law and the prophets lasted until John, that is, until the birth of Christ the Lord, they had the force of binding, but especially in those precepts and ceremonies which foreshadowed the nativity and advent of the Messias. It is added that at least some ceremonial precepts of the law were fulfilled through the various mysteries of Christ the Lord wrought before his death was accomplished: namely all those ceremonies which prefigured his miracles and doctrine, especially in cleansing lepers, enlightening the blind, raising the dead, instructing the ignorant, feeding the hungry through the miraculous multiplication of bread and fishes. Finally, baptism instituted by Christ was before his death, and had the power of giving life and remitting original sin, and thereupon the precept of circumcision in part ceased to bind before the Passion of Christ.

The second part is also evident, namely that the Mosaic Law began to die, and was extinguished only by the death of Christ. It is urged, first, because just as when the Priesthood is transferred the law must be transferred, as the Apostle says to the Hebrews 7, so while the Priesthood endures the law must subsist; but the Priesthood of the Mosaic law was not transferred until the passion and death of Christ, as the Apostle affirms to the Hebrews 9, where, having said that Christ entered once into the holies by his own Blood, he concludes: And he is the Mediator of the New Testament, that by means of his death, for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former Testament, they who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance: for where there is a testament, the death of the testator must of necessity intervene. As if he were saying: The Old Testament lost its force only where the New was established: but this was established only by the death of Christ: therefore only by the death of Christ did the Old Testament begin to cease and to die.

Further, Christ even to his death commanded certain precepts of the law to be observed: therefore it is a sign that the law itself still had some force up to the passion of Christ. The antecedent is evident from that of Matth. 8, where Christ, having healed the leper, commanded him to go to the Priest and offer the gift which Moses had prescribed to be offered for cleansed lepers: and Matth. 23 he said: The Scribes and the Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses: all things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: moreover, on the very day before he suffered he willed to fulfil the precept of eating the Paschal lamb: hence Luke 22 it is said, And the day of the unleavened bread came, on which it was necessary that the pasch should be killed: necessary, I say, by the necessity of a precept, which Christ himself willed to fulfil.

Finally, the Mosaic Law was wholly shadowy and figurative, and therefore it did not cease until all its figures and shadows were fulfilled: but these were not fulfilled until Christ, being about to yield up his last breath, said: It is consummated. Therefore the Mosaic Law, as regards all its precepts, was not entirely extinguished except by the death of Christ: whence deservedly St. Thomas, qu. 103. art. 3. ad secundum: While Christ was preaching and working miracles the Law and the Gospel ran together, because the mystery of Christ had already been begun, but not yet consummated, and for this reason the Lord Christ before his passion commanded the leper to observe the legal ceremonies.

This same truth is confirmed by the fact that at the passion of Christ the Lord the veil of the temple is read to have been rent, Matth. 27, which was truly an indication that the law of Moses had ceased. Hence St. Ambrose lib. 1. in Luc. c. 23: And the veil of the temple is rent, that the profanation of the mysteries of the synagogue might be declared: and St. Augustine sermon 111. De Temp.: The veil of the Temple is rent, he says, because the Synagogue is stripped of honour, the ancient observance dissolved. I said pointedly, however, that the Mosaic law was extinguished only in the death of Christ: for it does not seem to have been utterly extinct before the day of Pentecost, on which the Evangelical law was promulgated. For the Mosaic Law did not cease before the Evangelical began to bind, since the generation of the one is the corruption of the other: according to that of the Apostle to the Ephes. 2: Voiding the law of commandments decreed: that is, excluding the Mosaic law by the Evangelical decrees, as Chrysostom, Theophilactus, and Oecumenius expound in the same place: whereas the Evangelical law did not begin to bind before the day of Pentecost: therefore before that day the Mosaic law did not cease to bind. They suppose the major as certain. But the minor is proved: a law does not bind before its promulgation, as St. Thomas also teaches q. 90. art. 1.; but the Evangelical law was not promulgated before Pentecost: therefore before the day of Pentecost it did not begin to bind. The minor is proved: both because up to the time of Pentecost the Apostles did not set forth the Gospel publicly to the people: and also because, just as the old law was not promulgated except on the fiftieth day from the Passover of the Jews, so the new law ought not to be promulgated except after fifty days from the Passover or Resurrection of Christ. For that the promulgation of the Mosaic law was a figure of the promulgation of the Evangelical law, the holy Fathers teach, above all St. Augustine Epist. 119. and St. Leo Sermon 1. De Pentecoste. The marvellous conformity between the promulgation of each law urges the same point alike. First, for just as the Mosaic law was promulgated on the fiftieth day after the Passover, so also the Evangelical law was promulgated on the fiftieth day from the Resurrection of Christ the Lord, Act. 2. Secondly. Just as that was promulgated on mount Sinai, so this on mount Sion, according to that of Isaias 2: Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. Thirdly, just as on mount Sinai thunders were heard, and lightnings, and the Angel of God acting as deputy appeared to Moses in the midst of fire: so here suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a mighty wind coming, and there appeared parted tongues as it were of fire.

Third Conclusion. — The Mosaic Law was not mortal as soon as it lost its force of binding, but after its abrogation it was licit, though not necessary, for some time to keep its ceremonial precepts.

Proof: That cannot be judged mortal which was practised by the Apostles filled and enlightened with the Holy Spirit: but after the death of Christ, after the promulgation of the Evangelical law on the day of Pentecost, nay after its publication among the Jews and among the Gentiles, the Apostles themselves

practised and frequented the ceremonial precepts of the Mosaic law, although they judged them not necessary to be observed: therefore the observance of the law was not mortal as soon as its obligation was dead. The major stands. The minor is proved by several deeds of the Apostles. First, for Paul, who would not suffer Titus the Gentile to be circumcised lest prejudice be given to the truth of the Gospel, Galat. 2. c., nevertheless Act. 16 circumcised Timothy, born of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father, and c. 18 shaved his head at Cenchrea after the manner of the Nazarites: and c. 21 he purified himself with the Jews that he might conciliate them to himself, and having purified himself with them he entered into the temple. Moreover, St. James, who at Act. 15. had gone over to the opinion of Peter, namely that those converted from the Gentiles to Christ should not be burdened with the heavy yoke of the law, the same at Act. 21. gave counsel to Paul that he should present himself, purified together with others, to the levitical Priest, evidently that he might turn aside the envy and emulation of newly converted Jews; for he addresses him thus by the counsel of the elders: Thou seest, brother, how many thousands there are in Judea that have believed, and all are zealots of the law: now they have heard of thee that thou teachest those Jews who are among the Gentiles to depart from Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, nor walk according to the custom. What is it then? and the multitude must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come. This therefore do as we say to thee: There are four men with us having a vow on themselves: take these, and sanctify thyself with them, and bestow on them that they may shave their heads: and all will know that the things which they have heard of thee are false, but thou thyself walkest keeping the law.

But that James judged this observance of the law not to be necessary, but merely licit, is evident from what he subjoins: But as touching the Gentiles that believe, we have written, decreeing that they abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication. Finally, all the Apostles also coming together in Council Act. c. 15. decreed that Christians should abstain from blood and things strangled: but abstinence from blood and things strangled was one of the legal ceremonies: therefore the Apostles did not judge the observance of the old law to be mortal as soon as its force and obligation were dead. This truth the resolution of the following little question will demonstrate more clearly.

You ask: what sort, and how great, was the controversy and disputation of St. Augustine with St. Jerome concerning legal observance after the promulgation of the Evangelical law?

I answer 1. That it was indeed of the gravest kind, as is evident from the letters which the two holy Fathers wrote to one another on this subject: for when St. August. had read the Commentary of St. Jerome upon the Epistle to the Galatians, and had noticed that he contended that what is narrated in chapter 2 concerning the reprehension of Peter by Paul, because the latter usurped legal observances, and separated himself from the Gentiles recently converted at Antioch, so as to live after the manner of a Jew with the Jews who had come from Jerusalem to Antioch by way of James: which, I say, St. Jerome wished that reprehension not to have been serious, but simulated, nor did the Apostle observe the legal rites seriously, but only in simulation, lest namely it be a scandal to the Jews newly converted; St. Augustine receiving this gravely, thus writes to him in Epistle 9.

In the exposition of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians we find something that moves us greatly: for if officious lies should be admitted to the Holy Scriptures, what authority will remain to them? What sentence at length will be passed upon those Scriptures, by whose weight the wickedness of contentious falsehood may be undermined? For immediately when he has brought it forth: if he thinks otherwise, who strives against it: he will say that what has been brought forth was lied by the writer out of some honest duty. Wherefore since he had disapproved that sentiment of St. Jerome in many words, and had said: Therefore he also (Peter) was truly corrected, and Paul spoke truth, lest Holy Scripture, which has been published to posterity unto the end, its authority being admitted to falsehood, totter throughout and waver in doubt. At length he concludes: Wherefore lay hold, I beseech thee, of that ingenuous and truly Christian severity with charity for correcting and amending that work; and sing, as it is called, the palinode, for the truth of the Christians is incomparably more beautiful than Helena of the Greeks.

But when St. Jerome had received this Epistle together with two others written by the same St. Augustine, he indeed took it gravely and bitterly, that St. Augustine challenged him to sing the palinode: wherefore he wrote back to him the Epistle which is number eleven among those of Augustine, in which he censures the same St. August. not lightly, and endeavors with many arguments to persuade that the Apostles observed the legal rites only in simulation, and so that St. Paul reprehended Peter. Whence after many things he thus concludes the Epistle: I enjoin at the end of the Epistle that you compel not an old man now resting, and already a veteran, to serve as a soldier, and again to hazard his life, you who are young, and established in the summit of the Pontificate, teach the peoples, and enrich with our fruits of Africa the Roman roofs. It suffices me to whisper with a poor hearer and reader in a corner of the Monastery.

Therefore the sum of this controversy between the two Fathers was, that although they agreed among themselves in three points: First, that the observance of the legal rites, whether feigned or serious, was in some way licit after the death of Christ: Second, that it was not necessary, nor had force or efficacy unto salvation: Third, that after the sufficient preaching of the Gospel this observance at length became deadly: nevertheless they disagreed with one another chiefly in four points. For first St. Hieron. judged that two periods were to be distinguished, one before the Passion of Christ, in which the legal rites were not dead, but still retained some obligatory force, and likewise expiatory force in their own way; nor were they deadly either, because those observing them did not sin: The other after the Passion of Christ, in which the legal rites were not only dead, nor possessed any force of obliging or efficacy, but were even deadly, namely such that whosoever observed them sinned mortally: whence he thus addresses St. Augustine: Paul kept the ceremonies of the Jews when he was already an Apostle of Christ, and do you say they are not pernicious to those who wish to keep them as they received them from their Parents? I on the contrary will speak, and with the world protesting, pronounce with free voice, that the ceremonies of the Jews are both pernicious and deadly to Christians, and whosoever shall have observed them, whether of the Jews or of the Gentiles, him I hurl into the pit of the devil. For the end of the law is Christ, unto justice for every one that believeth, namely Jew and Gentile; neither shall there be an end unto justice for every one that believeth, if the Jew is excepted. Indeed however Augustine wished three periods to be distinguished, one before the Passion of Christ, in which the legal rites were neither dead, nor deadly: another after the time of the sufficient promulgation of the Gospel, in which the legal rites are dead and deadly, namely because from this time they could not be observed without mortal sin: but the third was the intermediate period, namely from the Passion of Christ until the sufficient publication of the Gospel, during which period indeed the legal rites were dead, because they neither had any force, nor was anyone bound to observe them by precept: yet were they not deadly, because those who had been converted from the Jews to Christ could during that period keep the legal rites, provided they did not think them necessary unto salvation, as if without the legal rites the faith of Christ could not justify. Second, St. Jerome deemed that the Apostles never according to truth kept the legal rites, but simulated that they kept them, that they might avoid the scandal of those who were of the circumcision: which indeed doing they did not delude others, because they performed this not with a mind of keeping the legal rites, but on account of other causes, just as if someone now abstained from blood and things strangled because it was adverse to his health: St. Augustine held on the contrary that the Apostles kept the legal rites sincerely, yet did not place in them the hope of salvation, as if they were necessary unto salvation: and this indeed they did, not with the cunning of one lying, but with the affection of one compassionate, not with simulation of deceit, but with compassion of mercy. That this was done, the Apostle said in 1 Cor. 9.: I became to the Jews a Jew, that I might gain the Jews: that is, says Augustine Epist. 9., he acts like a sick man who ministers, who does not lie in pretending that he has fevers, but with a mind sympathizing considers how he would wish to be ministered unto, were he himself sick: For certainly he was a Jew, but having become a Christian, he had not abandoned the sacraments of the Jews, which that people fittingly received, and in their lawful season when it behooved: finally he had abandoned their celebration, being already an Apostle of Christ, that he might teach they were not pernicious to those who wished to keep them as received from their Parents through the law, even when they had believed in Christ: nevertheless they no longer placed in them the hope of salvation, since through the Lord Jesus that salvation had come which those sacrifices signified. Third, St. Jerome deemed that Peter in that dissimulation, by which he is said to have compelled the Gentiles to judaize, taught not by the command of one teaching, but by the example of his conversation, says St. August. which, I say, St. Peter by this inducement did not sin: because he did this from a motive of charity, lest namely it be a scandal to the Jews. But St. Augustine on the contrary deemed that St. Peter sinned, venially however, namely on account of too little discerning an adherence to the party of the Jews, in order to avoid namely their scandal. Hence St. Hieron. thought that St. Augustine did not depart far from his own opinion, thus writing: Nor does it much matter between my opinion and yours: because I say that both Peter and Paul exercised, nay simulated the commands of the law through fear of the Jewish faithful: But you assert they acted clemently, not with the cunning of one lying, but with the affection of one compassionate, provided it stand firm that, whether through fear or mercy, they simulated being what they were not. Fourthly at length St. Jerome deemed that Paul did not truly reprehend Peter, but only in simulation, just as Peter himself only in simulation kept the legal rites; so that as Peter, unwilling to scandalize the Jews, simulated that he kept the legal rites, so Paul, lest he scandalize the Gentiles, wished to reprehend Peter, whereby he signified that he did not approve what Peter did, and thus by convention and pact each provided for the faithful committed to themselves: Peter indeed to the Jews, but Paul to the Gentiles. But St. August. on the contrary deemed that Paul truly reprehended Peter, and not in simulation: and although Peter sinned venially in keeping the legal rites, because thence arose scandal among the Gentiles, from whom he withdrew himself: nevertheless Paul did not sin in reprehending Peter, because from his reprehension no scandal arose. These things having been thus premised,

I answer 2. that the Apostles did not observe the legal rites with a feigned and simulated mind, nay, nor could they observe them. The prior part of this response stands from what has been said; and moreover it is proved, because no argument of such simulation exists in the Scriptures, nay the contrary is gathered from this, that Paul at the counsel of James and of the elders sanctified himself with four men. The motive of which counsel indeed was, that by this rite Paul might show that he did not teach a secession from Moses; whence James subjoined: And let all know that the things which they have heard of thee are false: but walk thou thyself keeping the law. But that counsel was not given to Paul, that he should merely simulate his sanctification with the four men; but that he should sanctify himself simply; for, says St. Augustine epistola 19., If he had truly been so reprobated as he had been rumored, and therefore undertook the celebration, that by a simulated action he could conceal his opinion: James would not say, and let all know: but would say, and all will think, that the things which they have heard of thee are false: especially since in Jerusalem itself the Apostles had already decreed that no one should compel the Gentiles to judaize; but they would not decree that no one should then prohibit the Jews from judaizing, although Christian doctrine compelled not even them to judaize. The second part of the response is also evident: for that cannot licitly be done which would have annexed to it falsehood, irreligion and scandal: but these three would have been found in the simulated observance of the legal rites by the Apostles. Falsehood indeed, for one is held to lie as often as he assumes false signs to insinuate a false opinion with an intention of deceiving: whereas if the Apostles had kept the legal rites with a feigned mind, they would have assumed false signs to insinuate a false opinion with an intention of deceiving: for if they had used the legal rites, that they might persuade that through those legal rites they worshipped religiously, while nevertheless their mind was not of worshipping God with such cult: therefore they would truly have lied. There would have been likewise irreligion in the very act: for then is irreligion, when someone assumes the rite of a false religion with that mind, that others may believe him to follow that false religion as true: whence it is a sin against religion to assume even the external distinctive signs of pseudo-religion: hence very many are numbered among the Martyrs, and are venerated by the faithful, because they refused to offer incense to idols: but if it had been licit to do this with a feigned mind, they would not have merited veneration as Martyrs, but contempt as homicides and the malediction of men; wherefore lib. 2. Machab. c. 6. the elder Eleazar rightly deservedly, when he was solicited by his friends that he should simulate having eaten swine's flesh, as the King had commanded, that by this deed he might be delivered from death; answered with generous mind, saying that he wished to be sent to hell: For it is not worthy of our age, that many of the adolescents thinking Eleazar of ninety years to have passed over to the life of foreigners, themselves also on account of my simulation, and on account of the malice of a corruptible life their time be cut short: and thereby I bring upon my old age a stain and execration. But if the Apostles had kept the deadly legal rites with a feigned mind, they would have assumed the rite of a false religion with that mind, that others believe them to have followed that false religion as true.

Finally, as regards scandal it is proved: he gives scandal to another, who confirms him by his example in the working of evil, or induces others by his example to do evil: whereas if the legal rites were deadly in the time of the Apostles before the sufficient publication of the Gospel, the Apostles would by their example have confirmed the Jews in the observance of the legal rites, which was evil, seeing that it was deadly. By their example also they would have provoked the Gentiles to a similar observance, who would deservedly have believed that what they recognized as assumed by the Apostles was to be assumed by themselves from religion. Nor indeed did the Apostles give scandal when they observed them sincerely. Not to the Jews, before whose eyes they signified that they assumed them for this reason, not as though they were necessary for attaining salvation, but that with honor they might conduct the Synagogue to the tomb, nor detest her as idolatry is to be detested, since God commanded that one, Satan persuaded this: and that as they ought not to be sought as necessary, so neither ought they be condemned as sacrilegious. Not to the Gentiles, because they signified to them that they bestowed honor on God with such cult for this reason, that they themselves had been taken from the Jews, among whom the old law no longer flourished, was good then when it was observed, now dead, but not deadly, whereas on the contrary the cult of idols always brought death.

It is confirmed. 1. Because no other reason can be brought why it is now not licit to keep the legal rites even with a feigned mind, than that they are now deadly: therefore if in the time of the Apostles before the publication of the Gospel they were deadly, not even with a feigned mind was it licit for the Apostles to keep them. Secondly, because it is not licit to simulate Gentilism, because it is something deadly: therefore neither equally was it licit for the Apostles to simulate Judaism, which was deadly. But St. Augustine urges this reason epist. 19:

Why, he says, is it not licit for me to say that the Apostle Paul, and other Christians of right faith, ought then by observing those old Sacraments a little to commend them reverently? Those observances of prophetic signification, guarded by the most pious fathers, would be accounted by posterity as diabolical sacrileges to be detested: for already, when faith had come, which was first announced in those observances, and revealed after the death and resurrection of the Lord, they had lost as it were the life of their office; nevertheless like the lifeless bodies of dear ones they were in a manner to be conducted with offices of necessity to burial, not simulated, but religious: nor yet straightway to be cast aside, or exposed to the calumnies of enemies as to the bites of dogs. Therefore now whosoever of Christians, even though he be of the Jews, shall will to celebrate them in like manner, digging up as it were their sleeping ashes, shall not be a pious mourner of the dead, or bearer of the body, but an impious violator of sepulture.

You will say with St. Jerome:

But either the legal rites were good and brought salvation, or they were not; if they brought not salvation, why are they observed? but if they are to be observed, surely they bring salvation, especially because when observed they make martyrs: for they would not be observed, unless they brought salvation: nor are they indifferent between good and evil, as the Philosophers dispute: continence is good, luxury is evil; indifferent between both is to walk, to cleanse the refuse of the belly, to cast forth the > refuse of the head and nostrils, to throw rheums with spittle. This is neither good nor evil: whether you have done it, or not done it, you will have neither justice nor injustice. But to observe the ceremonies of the law cannot be indifferent, but either it is evil, or it is good: you say good, I assert evil, and evil not only to those who believed from the Jewish people. In this place (unless I am mistaken), while you avoid one thing, you fall into another. For while you fear Porphyry blaspheming, you run into the snares of Hebion, decreeing to those who believe from the Jews that the law is to be observed.

St. Augustine answers Epist. 19. that the legal precepts immediately after the death of Christ our Lord could be said to be neither good nor evil.

But why, he says, should I not say that those precepts of the ancient Sacraments were neither good, because men are not justified by them, for they are shadows foreshadowing the grace by which we are justified; nor yet evil, because they are precepts divinely given, suited to the times and to the persons: since the Prophetic utterance also aids me, wherein God says that He gave to that people precepts that were not good: perhaps for this reason He did not call them evil, but only not good, that is, not such that by them men become good, or that without them they do not become good. If anyone, a holy Oriental in mere pretence, when he comes to Rome, fast on the Sabbath, except on that day of the Paschal vigil? But if we have said thus, we shall condemn not only the Roman Church, but also many places near to her, and somewhat more remote, where the same custom is observed and remains. If, however, we have thought it an evil not to fast on the Sabbath, shall we with rashness accuse so many Churches of the East, and much more of the Christian world? Does it please you, that we say there is a certain middle thing, which nevertheless is acceptable to him who does it not in pretence, but with fitting fellowship and without superstition? And yet we read nowhere in the Canonical books that this was ever commanded to Christians: how much less do I dare to call that evil which I cannot deny by the very Christian faith that God commanded, because I have learned that men are not justified thereby, but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? I say therefore that circumcision of its proper time, and other things of this kind, were given by God to the former people through the Testament which is called Old, for the signification of things to come, which had need to be fulfilled through Christ; upon whose coming those things remained for Christians only to be read, for the understanding of the Prophecy set forth before, but not to be necessarily done, as though there were yet to be awaited the coming of the revelation of faith, of which these things signified that they were signs. But although they were not to be imposed upon the Gentiles, yet they ought not so to have been taken away from the custom of the Jews as things detestable and to be condemned. Gradually therefore, and little by little, while the sound preaching of the grace of Christ burned fervently, whereby alone believers knew that they were justified and made saved, not by those shadows of things before future, then already coming and present — so that in the vocation of those Jews whom the presence of the Lord's flesh and the Apostolic times found thus situated, all that action would be consumed, this sufficing to them concerning the shadows for their commendation, so that it was not shunned as detestable and like unto idolatry, but beyond that it should have no further progress as though salvation were from it, or could not be without it. This the heretics thought, who, while they wish to be both Jews and Christians, can be neither Jews nor Christians; whose opinion, although I have never been in it, you have deigned to admonish me most benevolently to guard against.

In this indeed St. Jerome seems not to have attained the mind of St. Augustine in the earlier Epistles: for from the fact that St. Augustine asserted that the legal observances were licitly used by the Apostles, thence St. Jerome judges that he wished them to be still licit even after the sufficient promulgation of the Gospel; for the reason that Augustine had not determined the time within which the observance of Legal rites could licitly be done, as he himself indicates in Epist. 19, saying:

I confess indeed, in what my Epistle contains, that for this reason Paul had undertaken to celebrate the sacraments of the Jews when he was already an Apostle of Christ, to teach that they were not pernicious to those who wished to keep them, as they had received them from their parents through the law, in that I placed less [weight] upon that time only, in which the grace of faith was first revealed, for then this was not pernicious; but with the progress of time it was pernicious, unless those observations were abandoned by Christian men: lest if they were then done, there would be no discerning what God commanded His people through Moses from that which the unclean spirit does in the temples of demons, etc. Therefore rather my negligence is to be blamed, because I did not add this, than your rebuke.

You ask 2. Whether Peter was truly reprehensible, and truly, and not in pretence, rebuked by Paul?

I affirm; and it is proved first from chapter 2 of the Epistle to the Galatians, where St. Paul says: But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. And afterwards: When I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas etc. Before which words indeed he had premised in chapter 1: Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not. For if it is true that nothing false is contained in Sacred Scripture, it is true that Peter was deservedly to be blamed, and truly rebuked by Paul. Whence Augustine, Epist. 19:

If Peter did this, which he ought to have done, Paul lied, in that he saw him not walking uprightly unto the truth of the Gospel. For whoever does what he ought to do, certainly does rightly, and he says the same thing falsely of him who says that he did not do rightly what he knew he ought to have done. But if Paul wrote truly, it is true that Peter was not walking uprightly unto the truth of the Gospel: therefore he was doing that which he ought not to have done. And if Paul himself had already done any such thing, I would believe rather that, being corrected, he could not neglect the correction of his fellow-apostle, than that he set down anything mendaciously in his Epistle: and if not in any Epistle whatsoever, how much more in that one in which he had premised: now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not?

It is proved secondly; because he is reprehensible who by his example induces others to do that to which they are not bound as though they were bound to it, and so becomes to them the cause of scandal: but Peter by his example was inducing the Gentiles to judaize, as though that were necessary which nevertheless had been decreed not necessary for them in the Council of the Apostles: for the matter stood thus: Peter was conversing with the Gentiles converted to the faith, using their foods indifferently, and that by the instinct of the Holy Spirit, who had said to him: What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. Acts 10. But when afterwards the Jews had come to him from James, zealous for the legal observances, he withdrew himself from the Gentiles, and separated himself from them, because he feared these Jews, pretending himself to be of their opinion. By his example Barnabas, and the other Jews who were at Antioch, likewise separated themselves from the Gentiles in food. Then the Gentiles were troubled, as though the yoke of the law were being laid upon them: whence and do you not judge, how you compel the Gentiles to judaize? Not indeed by command, but by the example of his own conduct. Hence arose the occasion of the reproof, because although Peter had been instructed by God concerning the non-distinction of foods, he nevertheless feigned the contrary: thence followed the scandal of the Gentiles.

You will object 1. This happened after the grace of the Holy Spirit had been received by the Apostles on the very day of Pentecost: but from that time the Apostles sinned in no way: therefore it is false that Peter was then reprehensible: for no one is reprehensible except on account of sin.

I answer. From the day on which the Apostles received the Holy Spirit, they no longer sinned with mortal sin; because they were confirmed in grace: moreover they sinned venially, because they were not confirmed in good. But the sin of St. Peter was a venial vice of conduct, not of doctrine, as Tertullian speaks, book 4 against Marcion, chapter 3, of superstitious pretence, from which followed the scandal of the Gentiles.

You will object 2. It is not likely that Paul argued this in earnest against Peter, which he himself judged could be done legitimately, nay, and had done: but Paul had observed the legal rites for fear of offending the Jews, and had been made a Jew to the Jews and all things to all men, that he might gain all. With what face therefore, says St. Jer., with what boldness does Paul blame in another what he himself committed? Hence he had premised:

O blessed Apostle Paul, who didst reprehend in Peter the pretence whereby he withdrew himself from the Gentiles for fear of the Jews, who had come from James, why art thou compelled to circumcise Timothy, the son of a Gentile woman, and himself a Gentile — for he was not a Jew, since he was not circumcised — against thy own judgment? Thou wilt answer me: on account of the Jews who were in those places. If therefore thou forgivest thyself in the circumcision of a disciple coming from the Gentiles, forgive also Peter thy predecessor, that he did some things for fear of the believing Jews.

St. Augustine answers that the observance of legal rites was not equal in the two Apostles; for, he says, Peter kept them with the cunning of one dissembling, but Paul with the affection of one who sympathized; for Paul circumcised Timothy, lest the Jews, and especially those of his maternal kindred who had believed in Christ from among the Gentiles, might seem thus to detest circumcision, as idolatry is to be detested, since God had commanded the former to be done, whereas Satan persuaded the latter: and he did not circumcise Titus for this reason, lest he should give occasion to those who said that believers could not be saved without any circumcision, and boasted that Paul also held this opinion, to the deception of the Gentiles. Therefore Paul performed all these things out of the affection of one who sympathized, namely lest they should prove a stumbling-block either to the Jews or to the Gentiles; but Peter did not so, but acted in order that he might pretend to zeal for the law and the observance of legal rites together with the Jews; for, as St. Thomas says, q. 103, art. 1, ad 2: Peter did not sin in this, that he observed the legal rites for a time, because this was permitted him as one converted from among the Jews; but he sinned in this, that he showed too great diligence in the observance of legal rites, lest he should scandalize the Jews, so that from this there would follow the scandal of the Gentiles: whereas Paul exercised a moderate diligence in things legal, because he made use of them only lest he might be judged to condemn the synagogue, and that he might bury it with honor.

You will object 3. An inferior cannot licitly rebuke a superior: but Paul was inferior to Peter, who had been instituted by Christ the prince of the Apostles, that he might confirm the others: therefore etc. — St. Augustine answers in Epistle 19 that an inferior indeed cannot rebuke a superior by way of reprehension exercised through authority, which he grants; by way of the liberty of charity, which he denies. His words are:

But Peter himself received what was being done by Paul profitably in the liberty of charity, with holy and kindly piety of humility, and afforded to posterity a holier and rarer example, that they should not disdain to be corrected even by their juniors, if perchance at any time they should have left the path of rectitude; than Paul, that they might confidently dare, even the lesser against the greater, to resist at least in fraternal charity, for the defense of Evangelical truth. There is therefore praise of just liberty in Paul, and of holy humility in Peter.

Moved surely by this example, Augustine at the end of the same Epistle thus beseeches St. Jerome:

I ask the same of you in turn, that you correct me confidently, wherever you shall perceive that I have need of this; for although according to the titles of honors which the usage of the Church has now established, the Episcopate is greater than the priesthood, yet in many things Augustine is less than Jerome, although even correction from anyone lesser is not to be shunned nor disdained.

You ask: whether he who was rebuked by Paul was truly Peter the prince of the Apostles: or some other, seeing that he is not named Peter there, but Cephas?

I answer 1. To some it seems that that Cephas rebuked by Paul was one of the 72 disciples. So judge Dorotheus in his Synopsis, and Clement of Alexandria as cited by Eusebius, book 1, History, chapter 12. They rest upon this ground, that St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles does not recount the coming of Peter to Antioch, in which city nevertheless he was who was rebuked by Paul.

I answer 2. It appears more true that that Cephas rebuked by Paul was truly Peter the prince of the Apostles: because this Cephas, who was rebuked, is said in the same place, together with James and John, to be a pillar of the Church, and to have given the right hands to Paul and Barnabas: but another besides Peter the prince of the Apostles does not seem able to be joined to James and John, so as to be called a pillar with them, whereby the Church was especially upheld; whereupon the opinion of the other holy Fathers appears more true, who judged that that Cephas was truly Peter the prince of the Apostles.